How to Prosper in Farming
SIR-I have always read with great interest the articles on farming matters by your usual contributor, Mr. Walston. To me, a farmer, they seem to show a real practical knowledge of farming as well as an eminently public-spirited approach to various agricultural problems. How different is the approach of your contributor, Mr. Lloyd, in the Spectator of November 4th. Mr. Lloyd infers that many farmers in the particular area about which he is writing make a comfortable living (including pub- crawling) from a special compensation payment for sheep lost in the disastrous winter of 1947. Does Mr. Lloyd imagine that such compensation is paid every year ? If not the pub-crawling must have finished by now.
Mr. Lloyd also infers that these same farmers, with eight pounds per acre subsidy and enough potatoes for his family and a few pigs, are better off than the farmers who grow " a fine crop of potatoes." Now a fine crop of potatoes could be twelve tons or more per acre, giving a gross return of £100 or more per acre.
The important point is thdt, under the present plan of guaranteed markets and prices for the main farm products, the most profitable business for farmers (in the Birmingham area or anywhere else) is to produce the maximum quantity of produce as efficiently as possible. To an unbiased observer it is such farmers that are the most prosperous
today.—Yours faithfully, JOHN TABOR. Fennes, Braintree, Essex.
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