At the meeting of the Council of the National Farmers'
Union on Wednesday an important statement was submitted emphasizing the necessity for immediate action in order that the industry might know definitely what the nation expected and required of it. According to the statement, the Union can conceive of no alternative to Protection or subsidies but a diminishing production which means resorting to pasture or ranch-farming and allowing light land at present under the plough to revert to waste. The Council unanimously adopted the state- ment and will appeal to the Government for a decision. We cannot help thinking that this is an unnecessary policy of despair. It has been proved again and again that farmers cannot rely upon the Government. The Agriculture Act was destroyed by the urgent need for national economy all along the line. If ever State help again became possible we should greatly prefer subsidies to any form of tariff. With subsidies you know exactly where you are, but nobody can trace all the complicated effects of a tariff. So far as one can see ahead, however, farmers would be wiser to rely upon themselves and improve their methods of marketing and co-operation. By no means all farmers agree that arable farming is doomed. One solution is to make it largely the basis of stock-raising.
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