28 NOVEMBER 1931, Page 13

Now, some May think that the loss to the producer,

at any rate, brings advantage to the consumers. It does not, even temporarily. No personal experience in farming matters more impressed me—and it is worth even " damnable itera- tion "—than a visit to the farms of Mr.—now Sir Charles- lham in the neighbourhood of Ely. He has on occasion grown perhaps more potatoes than any man in the country. He had a bumper crop, and could not sell at any price. He bought some 4,000 pigs to consume the surplus, and even then a number of potatoes rotted in the clamps. I journeyed straight from his farm to Southwark market, and found that the poor of South-East London were buying potatoes at the rate of from £10 to £12 a ton. The distance of the market where potatoes sold at this price, and the farm where they would not sell at all, was not more than seventy miles !

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