FARMING IN FRANCE
By PHILIP T. OYLER
IMET recently an English farmer who had just spent a short 1 holiday in Switzerland. He travelled by train through France, and remarked to me that we English farmers had nothing to learn from the French. Evidently they were fifty years or more behind the times, for he saw oxen being used for ploughing—even within fifty miles of Paris. Others have made similar observations about Continental farming. In fact, we in England, forced by conditions to use machines rather than animals for farm work, now seem to judge a farmer by the number of machines that he uses rather than by the results that he obtains. We must be progressive. That is the dictum.
Now I have managed large agricultural estates in both countries, and my comment is as follows; If this English farmer had spent this summer with me in France, I could have shown him that we have much to learn. He would have travelled thousands of miles, had good food everywhere (well cooked as always) and complete luxury in places—in the Dordogne Valley, for example. It would all have been home-grown. The fact is that the shortage of food in French towns is not due to a shortage of it in the countryside. It is due to lack of transport. Railways and rolling-stock suffered severely in the war, and rubber for motor-tyres is very, very scarce.
France, it is true, has asked for foreign wheat—for two reasons.
An unusually severe frost before Christmas last year struck the autumn-sown wheat before it was winter-hardy and destroyed practically the whole of this crop throughout Northern France, which is the most important wheat-growing area. All of these fields were resown in spring and carried good cereal crops, but only a small percentage was wheat. Like ourselves, the French general public likes an all-wheat loaf and a white one at that. Hence the demand for imported wheat. I am convinced that, if France received none, it would not be much worse off. But the towns would have to put up with bread made of other cereals and maize, and that spells an outcry against the politicians.
It should be remembered that France has been self-supporting for
many generations. Since the French Revolution the majority of the farms belong to those who work them, and this is the surest way of getting the maximum produce from the soil and the surest guarantee against its loss of fertility. Men do not ruin or exploit the plot of Mother Earth that belongs to them. Even Russia bad to abandon its original policy, and has strengthened its power and increased its production enormously by allowing every peasant to own his holding and do what- he likes with it, in addition to helping on the com- munal farms. The shortage of wheat has been due also to the controlled price. The French farmers maintained that they grew it at a loss ; so they grew other cereals instead for stock-feeding and retained their wheat. This meant that the supply of meat increased till it is now at pre-war level. As the price of wheat has now been raised, wheat will be sown this autumn and, when it is harvested, the bread should be of pre-war quality and quantity, unless there are adverse climatic conditions.
French politics have been discredited for a long time in the eyes of the French themselves as much as (or even more than) in the eyes of others, but, whatever its politicians do or omit to do, France will be reconstructed far sooner than Britain. Indeed, a tour of it shows that it is almost back to pre-war state as far as its farms are concerned, and that in spite of its great loss in young manhood. Only the skeletons of burnt-out tanks here and there show the line of the invading armies. The fields all carry crops ; the roads have all been levelled up, if not re-surfaced ; all the destroyed bridges are replaced by solid temporary ones. I had to make only one detour. The ferry between Le Havre and Honfleur is not operating.
There are certainly signs of the shortage of labour. One secs far more tractors, notably (as one would expect) on the great level corn- belt of the north. Tractors are replacing both horses and oxen— to the farmer's anxiety. He is quite willing to use a tractor to supplement horses and oxen, but to dispense with the animals altogether spells danger to him. The tractor gives no dung, and a decrease of that means a decrease of fertility—which is any nation's true wealth. In numerous districts where small-holdings are general, there are fewer holdings of larger size. The loss of a son has meant a sale—and purchase by a neighbour. In the South the cultivation of hillsides, possible only by hand owing to their steepness, has had to be given up in very many places, and cropping has to be confined to the valleys and gentle slopes that can be managed by horse or ox. This is greatly to be regretted, for it is on the hillsides that the best quality wine is produced.
The large vineyards in the Bordeaux area showed no sign of labour shortage, and throughout France there is a heavy grape-harvest. There is, too, an abundance of wine, and farmers everywhere were enraged at the control—which remained only to provide jobs for the controllers, so the farmers said, for their cellars were overflowing. They were prepared to sell at about a quarter of the controlled price if the buyer would fetch it. The trouble, I suppose, was transport again, for I have since heard that control of any kind is to be taken off wine.
We like to believe that everything British is best, including our farming and livestock. If that were true why have we ever imported Friesian cattle, Percheron horses or Channel Island cattle? Do we still think that our racehorses are better than the French? Can we grow seven crops a year (or anything approaching that number) on the same soil as the French market-gardener has done all this century—and without any artificial manure? Could we convert our chalk downs into fertile wheatland, as the French have done with the whole of Northern France, which (a continuance of our South Downs) has by nature only a bare covering of soil overlying hundreds of feet of chalk? Can we make the same quantity of manure from five cattle as from fifty, converting all straw by a most simple process? Has every cottage and every farm in Britain electric light and power or likely to have it in the near future, as every French hamlet or farm in the most remote place has had for very many years? Here, for example, within fifty miles of London, the grid strides over miles of farms, and the farmers cannot have the benefit of electricity unless they are prepared to pay a misnamed public utility company a fancy price for erecting its own line.
Finally, our climate is naturally suited to growing good per- manent grass—our major crop. We may think we know how to make a good pasture, but we can learn something of our inefficiency by paying a visit to Normandy and Brittany where cows are tethered across the fields, which look more like our finest lawns. To attain to this we should have to start by eliminating the warble fly, as they have done. I could mention more. It would be equally distasteful to our pride. When we can grow our own food and learn the art of cooking it, it will be time for us to criticise the methods that our neighbours use. It seems strange, indeed, to find many Communists among the farming population. The explanation is in many cases amusing. The control of agricultural implements is by some means in Communist hands, and those whose names are not on the Com- munist register have to go without. As farmers need machines they become Communists—on paper. What the ballot box will reveal, when there is an election, may prove unexpected—in some quarters.
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