NAZI FARMING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 April 1938, Page 7

NAZI FARMING

MINISTER’S ABSOLUTE POWERS. AGRICULTURAL METHODS. Let us consider how Hans Vogel, typical German farmer, fits into the intricate economic plan of the Nazi state. Before the dictatorship. Hans killed each fall four or five fat pigs and made them into a winter’s supply of sausage and headcheese. Now he brings all his pigs to the Nazi control station and receives for them the government price. He has a fat steer to sell in the market. Exciting places, these German markets used to be. The trader beat his palm as he named a figure. The farmer beat his palm as he named another. And the chaffering proceeded until at last a bargain was made. Now, in the market metamorphosed by the Nazis, an officer comes along, glances at the beast, names a figure—and Hans must take it.

German agriculture is literally one vast corporation—the National Food Corporation. At its head is the Minister of Agriculture, R. Walther Darre, a man with absolute powers over all that concerns farming. He controls almost every phase of the farmer’s life. Hans can own his farm, but he cannot own what, he produces.

The following account of agriculture under Nazi dictatorship is condensed from an article by George Kent, which appeared in the “Country Home Magazine.”— The Government men arrive as the cows are filling into the barn. The take the stools from the farmer’s wife and the hired girl, sit down and begin milking. They strip the 40 cows, and set down figures in their notebooks. To every farm in Germany the Government men come to make sure that the amount of milk the farmers delivers is precisely the amount he draws from hie cows. For the farmer must bring all his milk to a control station. He cannot retain even a pint to churn butter for the family. The skim milk he needs for his pigs he must buy back. The price he gets is fixed for everything he grows.

NO BARGAINING Darre's supervisors stalk the farmer’s fields, squinting, estimating. When the potatoes start to grow, the supervistors point to empty spots and order a new planting there. They insist on so many catch crops—between crop plantings—that there is no longer any leisure. Ascension Day, once a merry holiday, is spent in toil. By decree from Berlin, Farmer Hans is ordered to sow 15 acres this year in flax. He hates the stuff. Any other crop would pay him more. But German farmers learn not to argue with a decree. There is a concentration camp ready for them if they do. And if a supervisor is displeased—if he thinks a farmer is careless, inefficient or unworthy—he can take over the farm and operate it himself, giving orders to Hans and his wife. CROPS REQUISITIONED.

By edict last July the entire wheat and rye crops were requisitioned to safeguard the nation’s bread supply. Farmers may keep only what they ned for their families. For feeding bread crops to livestock they may be fined heavily.

According to G. L. Steere, American agriculture lattache at Berlin, these strenuous efforts have succeeded in making the country 81 per cent selfsufficient. But many farmers are evading the rigid quota system. Gangs or powered cars, sell coveted foodstuffs syndicates, operating strings of highwidely, and individual bootleggers travel about on trains with food concealed in false-bottomed trunks and suitcases. The penalties are severe —fines, prison, and in tlie case of large-scale operators, death. Yet the Minister of Agriculture estimates that one-third of all food produced is sold surreptitiously.