Farming In Britain Today

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 73, 26 July 1948, Page 5

Farming In Britain Today

RIDING ON CREST OF THE WAVE (By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist) Derby, July 5. Farmers in Britain do not detest the Government. I had once thought it improbable that any farmers should ever like any Government anywhere. Certainly, there are Departments they ' do not like, and these they decry with an enthusiasm which would bring a glow of admiration to any branch meeting of Federated Farmers. During the last four days farmers from five counties have told me they like their socialist Minister of Agriculture. One doubted whether the Conservatives, if returned could produce as good a Minister as Mr Tom Williams. Their tolerance may be due to the ride they are having on the crest of the wave. ■ Between the wars, under a generally Conservative Government, farmers were really under. Came Britain’s wartime struggle to ward off starvation, and the farmers did right well. Now, after the war, they are still selling everything they produce, and are welldisposed to the Government presiding over this comfortable state of affairs. Go-ahead farmers are confident the future is bright. With the money they made in the war they are mechanising rapidly. Partly this is progressive husbandry. Partly it is an answer to the shortage and cost of labour. Mechanical planting, hoeing and harvesting is becoming the rule on larger holdings. I saw techniques reminiscent of an industrial production line being applied on a market garden near Holbeach, Lincolnshire.

There remain older farmers whose memories of the heartbreak years between the wars are grim and clear, influencing them as memories of the slump still influence New Zealand voting. These men are wary of the future.

The small farmers, amongst whom are to be found the pessimists, are torn between risking over-commit-tal of capital by buying their own machines, getting the work done by contract, or sticking to old methods. Contracting, not yet general, appears the best proposition. The contractor maintains a full range of equipment, and the small farmer is spared the expense and anxiety of breakdowns and repairs. Even the pessimists may derive comfort from Sir Ernest Bevin’s recent statement that the balance of Marshall Plan payments would be a hard task unless British agricultural production goes up another £150,000,000. “That means the safest job a man can get into for a long time is agriculture,” he went on. “If you want to give your children a good career, agriculture is the thing to put them in. It will have the least risk of unemployment for many years to come.” The Government guarantee of prices and markets, announced a year or more ahead, is accepted as a sound scheme throughout the industry as far as I have seen it. A Leamington farmer told .me that with wages and costs fixed, he had to have fixed prices and markets.

Any suggestion that British farming is headed for trouble is given the lie by land prices, which have rocketed. Successful businessmen are putting their ready cash into land as an investment, not a speculation. A Derbyshire dairy farm of 40 acres would not have been sold at £3OO an acre recently had the purchaser thought farming was on the decline. Britain can best produce potatoes, beans, peas, sugar beet (she nowproduces all the sugar needed for the meagre ration) wheat, barley, fruit and milk. She can never hope to be self-supporting in butter, cheese, wool and meat.