INEFFICIENT FARMS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3822, 16 October 1936, Page 5

INEFFICIENT FARMS

“JOINT STOCK” ALTERNATIVE. Mr. A. Bridges, deputy director of the Oxford University Agricultural Economic Research Institute, stated, in an address to the Fouth International Conference of Agricultural Economists at St. Andrews last month 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 great progress in technique 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 capital 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 man power 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 of holdings necessary to give scope for modern 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.