THE FARM IS NOT A FACTORY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 53, 4 March 1939, Page 5

THE FARM IS NOT A FACTORY

Production Control Is Not Easy

When the townsman hears of too much barley, of too many potatoes, and a glut of meat, he sometimes wonders why the farmer does not control production like the manufacturer. Here is the reply of the Agricultural Correspondent of the Birmingham Post. He writes: " WHAT happens in a bumper year with potatoes has happened again and again in the case of imported meat. The colonial has sent us supplies beyond our normal capacity, has broken the market for himself and us, with the result that we have jointly received less money for an increased tonnage. As an up-to-the-minute commentary, the same thing that so often used to occur with potatoes has happened in the current year's barley crop. “The immediate retort to all this is, 'Control production’; but, as is the case with so many apparently obvious cures for old and deep-seated ailments, there are snags. First of all. a farm is not a

factory; nor can total tonnage be adjusted, up or down, as is possible in a factory without destroying the farm; and second, consumption is neither a rigidly fixed nor an easily ascertainable quantum. “Add that, in the case, for instance of beef, one must begin restriction of output two years before it can take effect, and that the ‘time lag’ in the case of all farm products is many times that attached to manufactured goods, and it will be seen that the problem is incapable of being solved by a slogan, or of being reduced to simple arithmetic. “Consider a farmer who decides that there are too many sheep in the world and that he will cut his production. If it is a hill farm with sheep sparsely dotted over scores of acres, reduction means that his land is a half-used asset, that its fertility slowly declines because of decreased hoof cultivation, and. inevitably, a population decline where we want to increase population.

“On a normal grass-farm fertility decline would be more rapid, as would be depopulation, and the final result that which, above all others, we wish to avoid —an increase in understocked ‘rough grazing.’ “The fact that persistently eludes even the most fair-minded and sympathetic townsmen is that fertility is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its object is increased production, and the two linked together are the foundation of sound rotational farming. “We need maximum fertility as a measure of national insurance. Nothing else in the realm of agriculture will give us that insurance—and it is technically impossible at one and the same time to throttle production and increase fertility. One cannot put a caretaker on the land to keep it dry, dusted, and oiled against the time one needs it as one can with a machine. “The land, its stock, and its people are all living things. They progress and produce or decay and die. Nothing can make them static. There lies the difficulty in the quantitative control of production. One may, within limits set by rotational needs, increase or decrease this commodity or that On-, cannot decrease total production and maintain maximum fertility.**