Labour and the Land
The Labour Party's statement of policy on agriculture as outlined in a pamphlet Our Land follows in many of its most important recommendations the Report of the Liberal Party's Committee on "Food and Agriculture." The growing unanimity of view among progressive thinkers should not pass unnoticed. The two reports agree that much of the machinery of planning and control which has proved so effective during the war must.be retained, but while the Labour Party would keep a separate Ministry of Food the Liberals would merge its functions in those of an enlarged Ministry of Agriculture. Both insist on the necessity of an organisation for international planning which would study the interests of primary producers in all countries. The Labour Party still looks forward to the ultimate acquisition of all agricultural land by the State, but its immediate programme is identical with that of the Liberals, and puts upon the owner the duty of making prescribed capital improve-
ments necessary for good farming, in default of which the land would be purchased and taken over by a Land Commission—a body appointed by and responsible to the Minister. The Labour Party would help the good Owner by providing for loans at a low rate of interest for re-equipment. Both reports would keep the County Agricultural Committees, and insist on price stabilisation by various means, the importance of research, the provision of decent houses and 'good wages for farm workers, and amenities in rural districts. In these two reasoned statements which reflect the national demand that agriculture must not be let down again as it was after the last war, that we must have a long-sighted home food production policy, related to a controlled import programme itself related to an inter- national food policy, there is the making of a valuable programme.
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