Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen made an important announcement in regard to
corn prices when the financial resolution for the Agriculture Bill was taken in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The British farmer is to be paid for his wheat next year at the average price of imported wheat of similar quality. He is not to be forced to sell, as he is now, at a fixed maximum price far below the price of foreign wheat in our market. The Govern- ment have discovered at last that we shall need all the home- grown corn that we can obtain, and that the British farmer, faced with an ever-increasing wages bill, will not grow wheat unless he is assured of a reasonable profit. The area under wheat was reduced last year by 400,000 acres, as compared with 1918, and there has been a further reduction this year, owing to the Government's mistaken belief that imported corn would be cheap and plentiful and that the British farmer could be disre- garded. As it is, there is a scarcity of wheat in the world and the price is high. We trust that the Government's new decision will speed the plough and that next year's British wheat crop may rival that of 1918.
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