SPEED THE PLOUGH.

Evening Star, Issue 20980, 19 December 1931, Page 14

SPEED THE PLOUGH.

“ Now we are confronted with an economic struggle as full of menace as the submarine campaign.” These arc arresting words, but they were written by no sensation-monger. The agricultural reformer who has been writing for high-class English journals for many years under the initials “5.L.8.” strikes his many readers as a commonsense, level-headed, well-informed man. The burden of his present complaint is that within a decade two million acres of England’s countryside have been lost to the plough and a quarter of a million farm labourers have been driven from the fields. The community could endure that lost production so long as the trade balance was favourable. That is to say, England could afford to import a huge proportion of foodstuffs so long as her exports were maintained. But exports have fallen off, and the depreciated pound does not go so far as it did in making purchases abroad. “5.L.8.” states that every week, to feed the people, half a million quarters of wheat have to be provided, two million pounds’ worth of butter and bacon, over a million pounds’ worth of meat, besides livestock, eggs, fruit, and vegetables. “There is,” ho argues, “no safer and better way of reducing national commitments than by saving five million pounds a week on our external food bill.” And it sounds like common sense.

The first stipulation for a revival of farming in England is that fanning must .pay. Production must bo at a profit and not at a loss. The national finances are certainly not buoyant enough.to subsidise production, ns was tried in the effort to establish tho sugar-beet industry. But there is a powerful Free trade school of thought in England which warns politicians and tho public that, “if the farmer can win a price that will enable him to live, your food will cost you more.” Needless to say, prominent among this school are those with big business interests in the handling of imported foodstuffs. The figures of weekly consumptive demand quoted above suggest how vast a distributive business that must be. But “5.L.8.” maintains, as ho has always done, that it is not the fanners’ price that makes food dear. “ Tho combinations of clever tradesmen that render the nation’s acts of husbandry more or less nugatory must be broken up,” ho writes. “ The farmer must be rescued, if need be compulsorily, from his own secretive individualism, frok milling associations, bakers’ associations, meat trusts, dairy combines, and incurable absurdities like the N.F.U.” (National Farmers’ Union). Ho contends that, working on a two-year plan, under which co-operative marketing would replace the middleman, Britain could within that time be self-supplied in the matter of pork, bacon, butter, cheese, eggs, and vegetables, and could grow enough wheat to feed herself between four and, five days a week. That accomplishment would reduce the bill for imports by over £200,000,000 a year, besides enabling tho transfer of half a million workers from the dole to the fields.

“ If the Government,” continues this zealous reformer, “ instead of going off the deep end in company with the gold standard, had taken its courage (if any) in both hands and controlled the prices of bread, meat, milk, tea, and a few other commodities, it could, while taking 10 per cent, off wages, have lifted 20 per cent, from the housewife’s bills.” He admits, however, that there can be no making of omelettes without the breaking of eggs: “ Let it bo granted that tho shutters would have gone up on many shops where the output is trifling, the methods oldfashioned, and the distribution uneconomic.” Suggesting a Ministry of Agriculture backed by plenary powers, ho concedes that they would have “ to fight millers, bakers, meat kings, milk kings, shipping interests, even farmers with a foot in the middlemen’s camps.” Is the whole idea chimerical ? It may sound so, but every week seems to make it evident that Britain must achieve once again a favourable trade balance. Ever since tho war she has waited and worked for a recovery of her export trade. Tho result has been disappointment. Her alternative is to reduce her imports, and that means “ Back to tho land.” The matter is of paramount importance to New Zealand. Tho possibility of our losing the market which is tho mainstay of our existence may bo remote, but it is not an impossibility when economic law is driving as hard as it is now in tho Old World. Unquestionably such great changes are coming over Britain that it is no exaggeration to say that our Motherland is in a state of transition, and may emerge radically different.