17 MAY 1946, Page 20

The Obstinate Farmer

Towards a Socialist Agriculture. Edited by F. W. Bateson (Gollancz. 6s.)

FARMERS may be as crass and as obstinate as they are popularly reputed to be ; but the fact remains that, as a class, they are almost the only individualists left (artists and the dwindling craftsmen excepted) in the community. It is in the nature of their job that they should be so. But in the planned life which comes daily closer, there will be less and less cull for the creative contribution of the individualist ; and whether a man has satisfaction in his work will apparently be beside the point.

It is the aim of these essays, which are by various hands and were ariginally prepared for a Fabian Research Group, to argue the case or a Socialist agriculture " not on social but on technical grounds." ;But are the two separable in this way?) Mr. Bateson, the editor, holds that we now face the necessity for a change-over comparable to the earlier change-over from open fields to enclosure ; and he maintains that, just as family self-sufficiency then gave way to national self-sufficiency, so the latter must now give way to inter- national self-sufficiency. To this end roots and corn will have to be replaced in this country by milk, eggs and vegetables. The English farmer will have to produce what the buyer needs and what is most economical for him to produce within the international l'ramework. No doubt farmers as a whole would be willing to conform to such a change-over of crop and stock, once they were convinced of its necessity. But there is more in it than this. The basis of the new order is nationalisation of the land—with the increasing dead-weight of officials and committees and forms-in-triplicate that must inevit- ably follow. Rather naively one of the contributors suggests that the willingness of farmers in recent years to come together to talk is a proof of their willingness in the future to come together to farm. Nothing is less likely. Farmers have always• been keen to discuss agriculture with other farmers—it is almost their only theme. What else is market-day, for instance, but one-tenth business and nine-tenths talk? (But the talk, of course, is as important as the business.) As for the army of petty officials that will cling like barnacles to the ship of nationalisation, the war on the land was won in spite of the farmers' dislike of the whole lot of them • and shall they be liked any the more in peacetime? The farmer knows as nobody else can know, every inch of every field—what it can, and what it cannot, produce ; what it needs, and what it does not need. How often, during the war, did one come upon cases where, by the official flouting of the farmer's own advice, crops were taken off the land that were a waste of seed, time, land and money. Why then must the farmer be antagonised just at the point where his obstinacy (if you like) is most soundly rooted in commcn sense?

Professor Orwin, who contributes a foreword to this book, would deal summarily with such obstinacy. Agriculture, as he sees it today, is an " industrial curiosity," and he would put it under public owner- ship at once because " the private landowner has shown his inability to cope with the problem, and the suggestions which he has made for preferential treatment in matters of taxation, or for access to cheap labour, or for subsidies at the expense of the consumer cannot seriously be considered."

But the short answer is really no answer at all. Private owner- ship of land offers an incentive second to none • it is the foundation for the farmer's care for his fields (a care almost without parallel in any other human activity) and for the crops of those fields. Pride and satisfaction in the job are the basis of all good husbandry. They spring from individual endeavour and from loyalty to the land itself. Take these incentives away and the farmer of tomorrow will be in much the same case as the farm-hand of today, for whom, now that he is fast losing all interest in his work, there remains only the uneasy and temporary satisfaction of higher wages and shorter hours. If the farmer cannot be persuaded to co-operate willingly (and in matters of crop and stock -this should not be difficult) production in the new order will fall below production in the old, and the second state of our island agriculture will be worse