“SYSTEM HAS ONE WEAKNESS”

Southland Times, Issue 24001, 16 December 1939, Page 19

“SYSTEM HAS ONE WEAKNESS”

ROTATIONAL METHOD OF FARMING SUPPLY OF COMPETENT LABOUR REQUIRED At a conference of the British Society of Chemical Industry, Sir John Russell, Director of the Rothamsted Experimental Station, said that agriculturists in the nineteenth century thought in terms of “ascending spirals” —more crops more cattle, more cattle more manure, and more manure more crops. The rotation system on which this had been based had, however, one weakness; it required a supply of competent labour willing to accept as remuneration the equivalent of about four bushels of wheat a week, and as soon as wages got beyond that point it became uneconomic.

“This history of agriculture in our generation,” said Sir John, “is one long struggle to overcome the difficulties which have arisen in consequence.” . DEVELOPMENT OF NEW CROPS Dealing with development of new crops, Sir John said that perhaps the most important change in this direction in Great Britain had taken place in recent years; it had been the marked extention in the production of milk, fruit, vegetables, poultry, and eggs, all of them of great importance in the nutrition of the nation. There had been a great extension also in the area under so-called technical crops which represent the starting point in factory manufactures notably in England, sugar beet; elsewhere, fibre crops, and so on. These yielded a higher gross return an acre than the food crops and so permitted of higher rates of wages. At the present time stability was nearly attained with a minimum agricultural wage of 34/- a week, on the farmers’ side, with sugar beet sold at about 50/- a ton to the factory, with wheat pegged by the Wheat Subsidy Act at 45/- a quarter, and barley sold under a “gentleman’s agreement” to brewers. But if this delicate adjustment were broken, the whole difficulty started once more. In both Germany and Italy the adjustment had been made permanent. Prices and wages were both fixed, and any attempt to organize a strike or to increase prices was illegal. Labour-saving machinery was used as fully as possible so as to increase the efficiency of the surviving workers and provide better wages for them. So long as it had not reduced the animal population on the farm, this “mechanization” had been beneficial. But it had had bad effects elsewhere, especially in regions of 25 inches of rainfall or less, where grain crops were the easiest to grow.