PLANNING IN WAR

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20989, 16 December 1939, Page 23 (Supplement)

PLANNING IN WAR

BRITISH AGRICULTURE PLOUGHING UP THE LAND “Planning,” a broadsheet issued by Political and Economic Planning, Britain, contains a very comprehensive outline of the steps the Home Government has taken to meet the contingencies of war. A Central Board of Control, says the publication, has been set up at the Ministry of Agriculture in Whitehall with War Agricultural Committees in every county, responsible no longer to the County Councils but directly to the Minister. Each County Committee sets up and supervises local committees of farmers whose duty it is to promote the campaign for ploughing up 1,500,000 more acres of pasture. This is 250,000 more than the acreage which has gone out of cultivation in the last ten years, but 2,000,000 less than was in cultivation in 1918. The subsidy of £2 per acre for ploughing up grassland at least seven years old has been extended till March 31. 50,000 Tractors There are today 50,000 tractors on the land, compared with 3000 at the end of the last war, but ploughs and cultivating machinery are short, and there is a big decrease in horse. Moreover, the wet summer has left the existing arable land so “dirty” that there is neither machinery nor power enough to get it into anything like condition. Ploughing up and cultivating new land, therefore, is likely to leave the country with a more heavily weed-ridden harvest next year than for many years. Every available horse and horse collar will be needed, since few fields in Great Britain are yet laid out for economic work with tractors. More costings on tractor operation are badly needed. Fifty to eighty years’ arrears of land drainage will still further slow up the ploughing programme.

The cow and the pig, says “Planning,” are the most efficient-convert-ers of crops for home defence. The Minister has wisely decided to control concentrates and to produce one variety of “Nut” which, mixed with oats and roots and hay, will give the cow her balanced ration. Sheep are perhaps the least economical converters of raw material to human use, but they can live on rough pasturage and follow dairy cows with advantage. Training of Land Girls Plans for meeting the labour shortage by the training of land girls are still mainly on paper. The real shortage is hardly likely to be apparent till the spring, and many of the 200,000 men lost to the industry by migration over the last ten years have gone back into what is today a reserved occupation. This should enable the original programme of a one-month course to be increased to three months, which is none too long for anyone to learn how to handle cows, etc., intelligently. The starting up of a tractor by hand is still a job that needs a strong man’s arm.

Most important of all gaps still to be filled is the lack of a general clarification of aims. So much farming is still of the traditional variety and reflects modern industrial, economic and scientific technique as little as did much of the leadership of the National Farmers’ Union in the past. There is no sign yet that the expert staffs of agricultural colleges

or the Ministry are to be officially attached to farmers’ committees. The need for a comprehensive soil survey of Great Britain, which should have been completed ten years ago, is now being felt, but the few remaining experts on this subject are still unemployed. The pooling of all available knowledge in the service of wartime efficiency on the farm is as important as the need to pool labour, machinery, horses and even the land where so many units are too small to operate economically any longer. The food supplies of Great Britain have already come under a system of control which in many ways is more far-reaching than that achieved as late as 1917 in the last war. All local authorities must appoint a food control committee of fifteen members, with a food executive officer, who is usually the clerk of the council. The most important function of these committees is to examine charges of profiteering against retailers, who are liable to heavy fines if convicted.