GRIM POSITION

Evening Star, Issue 25927, 19 October 1946, Page 7

GRIM POSITION

BRITISH AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY BAD YEAR SETS FARM INCOMES BACK (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent.) (ltec. 10.20 a.m.) LONDON, Oct. 18. Britain’s bad harvest has placed her agricultural economy in a grim position, according to Mr James Turner, president of the National Farmers’ Union. “It has taken only one bad year to bring bank overdrafts back to farming,” he said. “ Taxation, higher wages, the general increase in production costs, and the clearing of pre-war overdrafts, have left nothing over from farming incomes.” Agricultural economy was social insurance that could save more foreign exchange than any other. The question for Parliament to-day was: ‘‘How low are the capita! resources of our basic industry? ” The answer was that they were below the safety standard for normal business', leaving no margin for efficient development. The price of food was basic to the price of everything else. The Government must face up to the alternative of heavy food subsidies paid by the taxpayer, or an economic price paid by the consumer, and to a wages policy based on one or the other. The industry was menaced by such a shortage of skilled labour that the Government must apply immediately any and every means to populate the countryside with an adequate labour force. “We are losing a generation. The old men are carrying on. Young men and women will not return to or enter into employment in agriculture unless housing and other amenities are' brought no fr > ".-Knn sTnndards.”