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REPORT OF DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF AGRICULTURE There are many indications that the seller's market which has operated since the commencement of the recent war is now changing to a buyer's market more characteristic of pre-war years. It is true that surpluses as experienced in the decade prior to the war have not yet materialized. In many commodities, however, surpluses are being built up, but are being treated in the main as reserve stocks. In many instances these so-called surpluses are the result of disequilibrium in trade and non-convertibility of sterling. Thus we find attention being paid to the necessity of maintaining producer stability. This concern is apparent in international organizations and specialized agencies, and in discussions at the recent Conference of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers particular stress was placed on the dangers which that organization foresaw in the near future. Similarly, the Council of the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations devoted most of its ninth session, held at Rome in May of this year, to a discussion of the practicability of FAO sponsoring arrangements which would ensure stability in terms of that organization's constitution. It is appropriate, therefore, to consider at this time some of the systems of price support which are being practised in various producing countries. Methods of price control to achieve stability in agriculture fall broadly into two categories —those which apply to products consumed entirely or almost entirely in the country of origin and those which apply to products which are economically significant in the export trade. The following examples are typical of these classifications : Sweden Sweden's economy is predominantly dependent on industry and sale of raw materials such as iron, steel, and timber. Agriculture operates under the disadvantage of a long, severe winter, a short growing-season, and a large proportion of small farms, resulting in relatively high costs and low incomes for farmers whose aggregate average income during the past ninety years has seldom reached two-thirds of the national average income. In Sweden no attempt has been made to base prices on individual costs of production, but the general aim has been to arrive at such prices for farm products as would result in a balance between total farm cost and total farm income in Swedish agriculture as a whole, at the same time ensuring that a reasonably efficient worker in agriculture should obtain an income comparable with that earned by workers in other industries. The scheme was initiated during the war, a broadly constituted committee reviewing the economic position of agriculture in the light of national statistical and price data and reporting to the State Food Commission, which includes representatives of farmer organizations and all political parties. The Government then attempts to balance gross farming revenue against gross expenditure, not by fixing prices over the whole range of farm products, although this was done with some strategic products such as milk, but by using its influence on the market for farm requisites and for farm-produce. Further refinements were introduced in 1947 involving the rationalization of Swedish agriculture, in particular by increasing the size of holdings, but from the point of view of price-control techniques the most interesting was the substitution of individual data secured by farm book-keeping methods for national data based on statistics. The important features of the Swedish system are, first, the method of approach through the State Food Commission, which means that at least some aspects of agricultural price determination are lifted out of the political sphere, and secondly, the flexibility of the pricing aspects of the scheme through the elimination of rigidities inherent in any system of basing prices of individual farm products on their estimated unit costs of production.

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