Farming Goes “On The Parish” In Bucks

Northern Advocate, 2 October 1943, Page 6

Farming Goes “On The Parish” In Bucks

The London ‘’News Chronicle” printed recently the following article from its Agricultural Correspondent, L. F. Easterbrook:

Farming history is being made in Buckinghamshire. The farmers of this county, under the leadership of the County Committee, are finding their own answer to those who say that the small farm is doomed because it cannot afford to bear the “overheads” of present-day agricultural mechanisation.

Their reply is to pool the machines in a whole parish and use them cooperatively. Farmers list their machines and lend them to one another at agreed charges. When they are shared, the same number of machines will do more work in less time than when they are used individually on small or smallish farms. Machinery Pools

Twenty machinery 'pools, covering over 50,000 acres, are already at work in Buckinghamshire and the movement has only just begun. In March alone, 13 parishes carried out cultivations, amounting to over £7OO in value. One of the most enthusiastic co-op-erators is Mr E. A. Randag, who farms the home farm at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s official country home. But now one machinery pool, representing the parishes of Dunton, lioggesdon and Stewkley, has gone a step further. It has begun communal ownership of farm machinery. The five committee members agree to stand guarantee for a new disc harrow which would be parish property. The harrow has been delivered. Paying Off The Cost

“We hope to pay off the whole cost. £65, in about two years,” Mr R. J. Weatherhead, of Dunton, secretary to the pool, told me. “We shall pay it off by the moneey we get in hiring it out to our members. We have 22 farms in the pOOl, acres, of which 1133 are arable. “But we hope this is only the beginning. We could quite well do with parish ownership of the whole range of cultivating and harvesting machinery. “The disc harrow belongs to the parishes. But we have also broken fresh ground by employing parish labour. We have taken on a man who is a thoroughly good all-round chap, especially useful at hedging and ditching. Guaranteed Wage “He is gfiaranteed 65/-,a week, plus overtime and his insurance, and he is hirerd out to farmers who want work done. We feel pretty certain we can provide him with full-time employment all the year round in good weather and bad. I rather feel there is room for more like him in our pool.” Mr R. T. Paget, who is organising these pools for the county, told me that he hoped the pool was something that had come to stay after the war.

“In many ways,” he said, “there will be even more scope then, with parishowned grass-driers, pasteurisation plants, milk collecting centres, threshing' tackle, mills for processing local-ly-grown feeding stuffs and co-opera-tion in marketing.”