FARMER'S AGE-OLD ENEMY

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 12

FARMER'S AGE-OLD ENEMY

"That the weather, and not prices, has ruined them" is the plea of a Texan'farmer who launched out in big scale, mechanised grain-growing, according to a, cablegram published yesterday. His argument seems to be that industrialised farming- is so cheap that it can defy depression prices but not weather (with pests). To separate the two, however, would appear to be difficult, even impossible. vThe weather risk is necessarily a factor in the price of farm pro-' ducts and in the price of land itself; the whole three are inseparably bound up together. At depression prices, Australian farming has been lucky in sustaining no major" drought. So much the better: for Australia. But weather luck cannot continue indefinitely, either in Texas or in the Commonwealth. Over a period of years, the prices of farm products, and the production attained (which production is largely dependent on weather), will decide the price of land. Land that has been deflated in good production years by bad selling prices may have to be further deflated if production (as well as prices) goes down. The weather risk, the selling prices, the cost of the land, and the cost of farming it all enter into the question. Without claiming that mechanisation governs the weather, some of its advocates say that by its speed of operation it avoids damage by predicted weather. But the'Texan failure does not even prove that.