PROFIT IN FARMING

Southland Times, Issue 25267, 23 April 1935, Page 8

PROFIT IN FARMING

PLAN FOR CO-OPERATION. WORKERS’ BONUS. London, March 16. Remarkable results from the first year’s working of the Fordson Market Garden Estate in Essex—where a manager and 30 men are cultivating nearly 1000 acres of land on a co-operative ownership system inspired by Mr Henry Ford—were announced this week. The total profits of the three farms which make up the enterprise, amounting to £1855, were distributed among the workers in direct proportion of their wages. The highest-paid worker received a bonus of £l4B 19/2; the smallest boy got £5 10/-. In addition, their weekly wages are slightly higher than those of the average English farm hands. Few established farmers, even in.the most famous market garden districts, could show anything like the overall profit of £2 an acre achieved here last year. But they would probably employ three times as many workmen as the Fordson average of 3| men per 100 acres. At the bonus distribution Sir Percival Perry, of the Ford Motor Company, described how the scheme originated. Five years ago, he said, when Mr Henry Ford was travelling through Essex, he declared: “They have too many trees and ditches here. This land ought to be properly developed.” So the Ford people in this country » bought and developed the remnants of Lord Kenyon’s estate in Boreham—2ooo acres of poor pasture and neglected parkland mostly. But after three years no progress had been made by ordinary farming methods and Mr Ford asked that his ideal farming system of co-operative ownership should be introduced. . Three farms were equipped, the workers on each were enrolled into co-operative societies and the land handed over to them at a rental sufficient to provide Fordson Estates Ltd., with 4 per cent, interest on the total outlay.