FARMING MYSTERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 216, 11 September 1940, Page 8

FARMING MYSTERY.

70,000 MEN QUIT LAND. VOLUNTEERS CAN'T FIND JOBS (By Air.) LONDON, August 14. Britain's farmers declared a few months ago that there was a danger of • a grave labour shortage when harvest time came. Reports showed tffkt over 70,000' men had left the land since the war began, and the ploughing up of 2,000,000 acres had added to the work to be done. Drastic powers were taken by the Minister of Agriculture. Arrangements were made to keep all existing farm workers on the land and for those with farming experience, but, in other jobs, to return to the land as soon as those jobs fell through. A successful appeal was made for more recruits to the Women's Land Army; schemes were launched to enable university students and schoolboys to lend a hand with the harvest. Now harvest is here. But recruiting for the W.L.A. has been temporarily halted and there are instances of farmers getting rid. of land girls since their wages went up; about 2000 student volunteers have not been offered work; hundreds of schoolboys are looking for jobs. The general trend of reports from the employment exchanges is that a remarkably small volume of applications for regular farm workers is coming in. There is no doubt that on thousands of farms too few men are employed to get maximum output. Skilled men are, in fact, wanted in many districts. There is considerable reluctance to take on unskilled labour, especially temporary, even at the lower rates of pay now conceded, and the difficulty of employing squads of untrained volunteers on moderately sized farms and of iiuding.. tools, .• and. the . question of housing, have all influenced the demand.