" A NEW START WITH FARMING "
SIR,—Mr. Orwin is a great authority on agriculture and I had hoped that he would have carried his argument rather further in a third article. Nobody will dispute his view that we cannot continue indefinitely to provide untold millions for the benefit of private land- owners. Is it, however, his opinion that without subsidy, protection, or other direct or indirect help British agriculture can become economically self-supporting by (1) the reshaping and re-equipment of farms, (2) the control of policy by the State, and (3) the provision of finance? If not, his proposal is to create a parasitic industry which is to be carried permanently upon the shoulders of the rest of the community. He makes a fourth suggestion—ownership by the State, from which he envisages the possibility of profit ultimately accruing to the State. The certainty of political pressure for the reduction of rents and the increase of salaries, profits, and wages seems to render that possibility sufficiently remote. If we subsidised fanning, reasonable skill, reshaped and re-equipped farms and adequate finance would yield a self-supporting industry: the need for State ownership is not apparent. It is no doubt true that so long as we subsidise farming, inefficient farmers will take ill-equipped farms which ought to form portions of more economic units. But for the subsidies of recent years that trouble might well have been eliminated before now.
Mr. Orwin wants the State, after the war, still to control cropping and thereby plan agriculture in the national interest, but he does not explain what he means by the national interest. Is it the production of economic or of uneconomic crops? If the former he suggests no reason why uncontrolled individual effort should not have that result.
Letcombe Bowers, Wantage.
Previous page
