SOIL UTILISATION IN BRITAIN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 8, 10 January 1946, Page 4

SOIL UTILISATION IN BRITAIN

'TTIE United Kingdom, home of individualism, has found through 1 her war experience that the historic doctrine that a man may do what he will with his own farm-lands is inadequate. The nation’s need for food must now over-ride the will of the individual farmer. In order to secure the maximum of food production in Britain local committees of farmers were set up. These committees had power to direct what a farmer’s production schedule should be. Where the individual farmer proved non-eo-operative or inefficient the committee had the power to remove the farmer from his farm. The results were so successful that by this method of local direction and oversight British farming so increased in efficiency that the pre-war imported two-thirds of the nation’s food supply was reduced to one-third. Now the war has ended and Britain’s overseas assets have disappeared she can no longer afford to spend as much as formerly on her import food bill, which means that she must continue to produce more from her own broad acres. This the Government determines shall be done.

A new commission is being set up under the Ministry of Agriculture empowered to acquire land owned by farmers who have been dispossessed through improper or inadequate utilisation. This newly-acquired land is to be operated as State farms. The temper of the people of the United Kingdom seems to be such that this new move does not cause them any shock, and even American agricultural observers are of the opinion that the new set-up is justified by results. Supervision of the production of foodstuffs on British acres will continue to be and remain a permanent feature of British agriculture.

Whether the State will be able to operate farms in an efficient manner remains to be proved. Farming operations require to be directed in the day-to-day work by someone on the spot who can meet changing conditions due to weather, drought, disease, blight or other causes. The most successful farmer is he who meets these ever-changing conditions with the least loss of time, money and production. There will remain in farming operations all the scope anyone needs for the play of individual talent and energy despite this direction and demand for efficiency. But the State is “in farming” already in that it provides guaranteed prices to farmers for such essentials as milk, potatoes, sugar beet, eggs, fat and livestock. Paying the piper, the State is calling the tune, and no objection can be taken to that being done. Guaranteed prices for farm produce and control by the guarantor of the farming operations must eventually go hand in hand, both in New Zealand and in Great Britain. Farmers in neither country can have the one without the other.