COUNTRY LIFE
Potato Loss Kent, though a southern county, has only a comparatively small acreage devoted to early potatoes ; Ayrshire, hundreds of miles farther north, produces an earlier and far larger crop. Kent growers alone, however, are complaining of a loss of £60,000 on the season's working. A diminishing scale of price-control, coming into force on May loth, and lasting until July 27th, had been worked out by producers and Ministry of Food officials. Admirable and fair in itself, it unfortunately took no account of the effect of a late season. It could have occurred to no one that the spring of 1941 might be the coldest and most dis- astrous for a hundred years. It was almost July, instead of late May, before early potatoes were being lifted ; the crop was an average of twenty-five days late. This disastrous state of affairs obviously called for a readjustment of the schedule: a fact that was pointed out to the Ministry in early June. The Ministry rejected the request for an alteration in the scale of prices, so that by the time the first potatoes were being marketed the prices low in the scale were in operation. This official obstinacy has resulted in an enormous loss to growers, and will, as one important Kent agriculturist has pointed out, have a further disastrous effect in the very deep discouragement of the farmers concerned. It is quite clear.that we cannot afford idle land ; it ought also to be clear that we cannot afford discouraged farmers.
Previous page
