Country Life
A FRUITFUL IDEA.
One of the standard mysteries of British farming is that co-operation fails—fails as completely as it succeeds in Ireland or Denmark—though most people agree that farming pro- sperity depends on the producer receiving a larger proportion of the money paid by the consumer for the produce. On an average, so great is the " spread," the producer receives, if he is lucky, about £3 in £10. There are a good many reasons for this failure, though no sufficient reason : the individualism of the farmer ; the established grip of the merchant ; the emphasis on imports as witnessed by the building of mills at the coast ; the local markets ; the absence of an export trade ; the accident by which the N.F.U. became the organizing authority, and so on. There are some flourishing co-operative associations, nevertheless, and signs are not wanting that the roots of the movement have at last touched a more congenial stratum of soil, quite apart from the artificials " to be supplied by Mr. Addison. It is this fact, as it seems to me, that lends peculiar importance to a scheme put forward modestly, but not without emphasis, by Mr. F. N. Blundell, in a book just published—A New Policy for Agriculture (Allan, 7s. 6d.).
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