SMALL, INEFFICIENT FARMS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22999, 30 September 1936, Page 7

SMALL, INEFFICIENT FARMS

“ JOINT STOCK ” ALTERNATIVE

Mr A. Bridges, deputy director of the Oxford University Agricultural Economic Research Institute, stated, in an address to the Fourth International Conference of Agricultural Economists at St. Andrews on the 3rd inst., that many farms were too small to be efficient. He suggested that larger holdings might be developed by companies on the joint stock principle. - Agriculture, he said, had made groat progress in technicme in recent years. Within the limits of its present organisation it was reasonably efficient. But when the structure of the organisation was considered, he doubted whether any progress had been made. “ Is it not true," he asked, “ that because of the too great division of holdings, by the methods of individual capita] and control, and by difficulties associated with labour organisation, the capital costs and maintenance of the permanent and temporary equipment in agriculture are too high, man-power is wasted, the primary marketing of farm products is too costly, and the industry generally is not as efficient as it might be? ’ The organisation of agriculture on a joint stock basis, with larger units, would probably mean that fewer people would be on the land but it should increase production. Greater profitability in the industry would attract more capital, and that in turn should mean a greater intensity of farming, and. perhaps, in the long run. some rise in rnan-nower from the lower level to which it would have been reduced in the first instance. It should be recognised that to accomplish an increase in the size ot holdings necessary to give scope for mowern ideas of production, a revolution in organisation of farming would be involved. , . . In England and Wales, taking .only 500 acres as a size to secure efficiency in production, the number of holdings would have to be reduced from 584,000 to some 50.000