FOOD PRODUCTION

Taranaki Daily News, 16 January 1935, Page 12

FOOD PRODUCTION

SCIENCE AND THE LAND. ECONOMIC TROUBLES. The social effect of the application of science to food production was one of the subjects dealt with by Sir John Russell, Director of the Rothamsled Agricultural Experimental Station, when he addressed members of the Manchester University Science Federation recently, states the Manchester Guardian. Production in England, he said, was lower than in pre-war days. So far as wheat was concerned, the reduction was partly due to the use in the Dominions of large machines which worked far more effectively than the little machines used here. Home producers had tried to meet this competition by equipping themselves with larger machinery, and mechanisation enabled work to be done exceedingly cheaply and with very little labour. On a 900-acre farm in Norfolk where 40 men were employed under the old system only four were needed when mechanisation was introduced. The lowest price at which the wheat produced could formerly be sold was 10s a cwt, but under the new system it could be sold certainly for 6s a cwt, and possibly for less. One had to take into account, however, the rate of the thirtjsix displaced men. He had made inquiries, and of the men whose records he could trace he had found that ten had got other work, two had died, thirteen were given relief work, nine were unemployed, and two were rat-catchers, etc. A method of counteracting the effects of competition had been the formation of small holdings. Between 1919 and 1930 the Ministry of Agriculture and the county councils had set up 17,642 smah holdings, but it had been found in effect that for every ne*v small holding established an old one went out of existence. It appeared, therefore that mechanisation . would solve the problem of price but not the problem of men, and small holdings would do the reverse. Even in Canada mechanisation had not been a very great success. Last year, said Sir John, he had visited some farms in Western Canada, and they were in a deplorably bad position financially. Not far away' there were some French Canadian settlements run on completely different lines which offered considerable lessons both for this country and for Europe. The settlements were self-sup-porting and self-sufficing, and did not attempt to produce commodities for a world market already glutted with food. One did not get that sense of poverty and exhaustion that one got in the corresponding wheat towns producing for a world market. Members of the settlement had no machinery at all and had not even horses. Farms were worked by families and were the one bright spot in agriculture. It did not follow, said Sir John, that the man who did not apply science and engineering but simply worked with his family in the fields was better off than the man who had all the resources cf science and engineering at his back. A position had been reached where the community could only derive the best advantage from science when there was a certain amount of organisation in its life. Production and distribution should be related to each other. Speaking later on the same topic in answer to questions, Sir John said he thought it would be possible in Eng-

land to set up almost independent com,, munities. The world could organise itself on the basis of specialisation—each country producing its best commodity and ■pooling its resources, or science could arrange that each country should produce a sufficient amount of everything it wanted. Britain, for example, could produce all the sugar and most of the wool she needed. Obviously she. could not grow cotton, but she could import larches from Norway to produce artificial silk. The country would have to pay for increased food production at home by diminished exports. How far was it worth while? In answer to a question Sir John agreed that the French Canadian settlements were fostered by the Roman Catholic Church. A similar movement had been set on foot in this country, but it was too early to say whether it had been successful. The weakness of the small holdings system, he said, was that it produced goods for the market which the market was unable to take. The best hope of success for the scheme of resettling the unemployed on the land was for the workers to produce for their own requirements and so ensure themselves a living.