FUTURE OF BRITISH FARMING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 68, 18 August 1947, Page 6

FUTURE OF BRITISH FARMING

CONCENTRATION ON LIVESTOCK RESTORING BACON, EGGS AND MEAT What kind of farming would best suit Britain in peacetime is a question of climate, soil, and the food requirements of a dense population, says the Evening Post, Wellington. Two world wars in a generation compelled an adjustment of traditional agriculture to the changed circumstances of a limited capacity for the importation of food. Many desirable articles of diet had to be forgone to permit the maximum quantity of essential foodstuffs such as wheat and other cereals to reach the shores of a Britain partially beleaguered from under the sea and from the air. Those imports had to be supplemented by a maximum growth from Britain’s own soil of crops most capable of sustaining life. Hence, rigid rationing and a dull, if sufficient, dietary, without frills of any kind. Now that peace has come, more variety is possible, and the British Minister of Agriculture, Mr Williams, has told Cheshire farmers that Britain wants to get away from cereals, potatoes, and sugar and concentrate on livestock. If Britain is to regain a sound economic state, he said, the sooner she started a breeding campaign to restore her livestock the better.

Bacon, eggs, and meat are what the British people miss most, for their home-produced supplies were greatly depleted during the war. Like New Zealand, Britain is, first and foremost, a grazing country, and, as such, gave the world most of its breeds of cattle, sheep and pigs, deriving in normal times considerable revenue from the export of pedigree stock. Such a type of farming, wherever conditions were suitable, not only harmonised with the natural genius of the British farmer through the generations, but was admirably adapted to world trade, particularly to trade within the Empire. It also contributed to the preservation of the fertility of the soil, which would be liable to impoverishment through continuous cropping, a danger foreseen during the necessitous war years. The present economic crisis has made new demands on British agriculture and its possibilities are now being better realised than ever before. With adequate labour and organisation production could be greatly increased.