BRITISH AGRICULTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25881, 27 June 1945, Page 5

BRITISH AGRICULTURE

WAR-TIME PRICE GUARANTEES DEMAND FOR CONTINUATION (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent) (Rec. 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, June 26. The first objective of British farming should be to provide an adequate standard of nutrition for all classes of* the community, and the main concern should be with commodities such as milk, high-quality beef, mutton, pigs, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and fruit, in which Britain has comparative advantages in . production, and for which there is an expanding demand at lower prices. This opinion was expressed in a book, “The Future of British Farming,” by Dr A. W. Menzies-Kitchin, who is in charge of the economics department of the School of Agriculture, Cambridge. Sir John Orr has written a foreword to the book. The author expresses the opinion that an expansion on the lines mentioned does not exclude the possibility of maintaining a larger acreage of arable land or of cereals, but he foresees that as world prices fall it will be impossible to maintain the present cereal acreage. In an editorial on farm politics, the Observer recalls that the Agricultural Act of 1920, which put the price system and the controls evolved during the last war on a permanent basis, lasted only eight months. World prices slumped, and in August, 1921, the principal provisions of the Act, including guaranteed ~rices for wheat and oats, had been repealed. This repeal is still called in farming circles the “ betrayal of 1921.” The central issue in the present general election in rural constituencies can be summed up in a single question, “ Will there or will there not be a repetition of 1921? ” The Observer considers that in some respects the situation to-day is identical with that after the last war. Farmers’ representatives and their political sponsors are again demanding the continuation of war-time price guarantees beyond the interim period of the next four years. In return, they are prepared to accept a structure of public control similar to that established by the 1920 Act.