FARMING AND POLITICS
MR. WALTER ELLIOT'S activity at the Ministry of Agriculture may be admired both as achieve- ment and as example. In the latter respect it is more than a little timely. Since the National Government completed its first year of office, there has been a growing tendency for its members to develop that habit of well-meaning but muscle-bound inaction which overcame the second Baldwin Cabinet after 1926 and earned its dismissal by the electors in 1929. But here at least is a Minister who does something. His arms and legs keep moving. Within his appointed sphere he is a Roosevelt and not a Hoover ; he has realized that a democracy traversing a world economic crisis will not tolerate its leaders folding their bands.
But what of his achievement ? He himself in the debate of last Monday was careful not to pitch its claims too high. A start had been made, he said, in agricultural organization, in the improvement of the price level, and in the improved remuneration of the workers. But these were the beginnings and not the ends of the agricultural policy ; and there was no justification for any foolish optimism. His caution was indeed necessitated by the facts. If you went down to almost any farming centre today you would not vet find the people concerned " on the. top " of their problem. Neither the milk policy nor the bacon policy has as yet given complete satisfaction, whether to producer or consumer or middleman. As for beef, if you survey one of the counties like Devonshire or Leicestershire or Hereford, where it is the backbone of farming, you will discover the raisers of livestock in a really terrible position ; what with prices so low that every beast sold brings a heavy loss, and with the drought forcing sales, because there is no prospect of keep for the animals. Even eggs, where the National Mark scheme got an early start and has had a remarkable effect in increasing pro- duction, have fallen now to prices which may well dismay the producers. Perhaps the nearest thing to a complete recovery of prosperity has been in market-gardening. The tariff on horticultural products has caused to be raised in England an immense quantity of vegetables, both in the open air and under glass, in place of those for- merly imported from France and Holland. But already the rush of growers to expand this industry has raised in certain directions the spectre of British over-production. The same trouble haunts the potato growers, who with 97 per cent. of the home market reserved for them find it very hard to turn round inside it without beating each other down to unremunerative prices.
These difficulties may in time be overcome. There is nothing fantastic or purely experimental about the Ministry of Agriculture's policies ; and they certainly did not spring Minerva-like from the fertile head of Mr. Elliot. They were evolved by long processes of careful thinking, dating back at least as far as the Linlithgow Committee of 1923. The only change, though it is a vital one, which has come in with Mr. Elliot, is that owing to the alteration in the country's fiscal policy, which has made tariffs and quotas available, it has become feasible, at a cost, to organize a home marketing scheme without seeing the bottom knocked out of it by foreign imposts. This is an alteration, which. it is possible to deplore on broad national r r_d international grounds, and yet to sregard as indispensable in this particular sphere, given the world-wide spread of economic nation- alism which characterizes our epoch. Its application even here, however, has raised urgent problems, which have not yet been solved.
The first, yet perhaps the simplest, is that of prices to the consumer. Admitting that nearly all save that of liquid milk were ruling far too low and required to be raised, there are obvious risks of raising them too high, as was done in Germany and other Protectionist countries before the War. The real safeguard in Britain is our con- stitution. We are governed by a democracy, the vast majority of which are urban consumers of agricultural products. That majority is very sensitive to prices, and all Governments must remain sensitive to its votes. A far more dangerous problem is that of reactions on our export trade. Mr. Elliot himself described it in a parable.
Lancashire, he said, which contains more hens than human beings, demands that the import of liquid eggs from China shall be stopped. But the same Lancashire is extremely anxious to sell cotton piece-goods to China, and desires, of course, to be paid for them. The parable has a hundred applications. Nothing would be easier, if duties and quotas were indiscriminately piled up against our imports of agricultural produce, than to create in Great Britain far more industrial unemployment than the increase in farm employment would offset. What is more, cause and effect would be far less obvious here than in the matter of excessive prices, and you could not rely on any direct democratic outcry to stop the mischief. More still ; it is not a matter that ought to be left to the Minister of Agriculture and the President of the Board of Trade to haggle out by themselves. There ought to be— what there still is not—some sort of real Economic General Staff to advise on such problems with an expertness to which no Minister can pretend, and an impartiality, which is . almost impossible of attainment by experts attached to particular Departments.
The case of beef, on which Mr. Elliot was still unable to announce the Government's policy, is very much in point.
Their plan, it is generally understood, is to put a levy of a penny a lb. on imports of Dominion and foreign beef, and devote its proceeds to subsidizing British. So far, so good ; but in addition it is essential to lower the imports below the . figures arranged at Ottawa and under the Argentine Trade Agreement. The Ottawa arrangement, which is the keystone, came to an end on the 30th of last month ; so the Government have a more or less free hand. But the practical question remains. Just how much of our industrial export trade with the Dominions and with the Argentine shall we be justified in risking or sacrificing in order to help the British farmer in the beef market ?
Yet another difficulty will, increasingly present itself, as calls arise in one or other branch of farming, not merely for the exclusion of foreign produce but for the limitation of British output. Sir Francis Acland put his finger on it when he said that under marketing schemes " monopo- lies should not be conferred on those who happened to be producers of a commodity at a particular date." Yet this is precisely what is proposed under the Hops scheme as now launched. Nobody is to be allowed to market hops except the present producers of them. Hops are a very limited and much specialized commodity grown in a very few districts only ; and the principle, wrong as it seems, might be slipped through on that ground. But once admitted, where is it to stop ? Potatoes might per- haps afford the next analogy, but others would follow. Improved productivity, as well as increased production, makes towards gluts. The average hen, according to Mr. Elliot, laid 20 per cent. more eggs in 1930-1 than in 1925-6 ; the average cow gave 12 per cent. more milk. Cereal crops, notably barley, have been similarly increased by science in the last two decades. These changes are progress ; but they may ultimately make it undesirable to allow anyone and everyone to produce and market just whatever amounts of eggs or milk or barley he pleases. How is this problem to be solved without cramping liberty unduly and depriving agriculture of the elixir of free enterprise ? It is difficult to answer, and safer, perhaps, not to dogmatize too far in advance. Meanwhile there is the challenge of the Hops scheme staring us in the face ; and we should be unwise to ignore it because it is " only a little one."
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