MODERN WORLD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1941, Page 8

MODERN WORLD

STATUS OF THE FARMER. i The English farmer's position in the modern world of productive (industry is surety unique, writes Dr. C. S. Orwin. director of research into agricultural economics at Oxford. A man can enter the engineering industry, or the woollen or cotton industries, on his technical knowledge and his general ability. Competition between applicants will generally secure that the most able get. the best positions, and a man can rise from the bottom to the top. Competition between firms for orders will secure that the standard of efficiency in production is maintained and developed. Farming, on the other hand, is closed to everyone who is not content to remain at a labourer's wage all his life, or who cannot invest capital if he wishes to work in any oilier capacity. Further, there is little of that competition for the market between producers which makes for efficiency in management. There are worldprices for most things the farm produces, and there is nearly always a market at a price. It follows that agriculture makes no appeal to the smart young worker, nor to the clever boy from the secondary school —to the first, because it offers no prospect of advancement nor even a good basic wage; to the second, because the farming industry is closed to the man with nothing but his brains to invest. Speaking generally, and with notable exceptions among both masters and men, the standard of performance in I agriculture is relatively low, and so will it remain until the day when it is possible for young men to find careers on the land comparable with those open to them in other fijrms of industry. The want of such openings is due not so much to the “neglect of agriculture by the State." as so many people, landlords and farmers, would have us believe, as to the need for a new conception of agriculture as an industry, and a replanning which won id lift it from the level of midVictorian organisation, at. which it has remained since the passing of the open fields, and put it more on a liar with the oilier great activities of the nation.