THE COSTS OF GROWING WHEAT
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In your issue of February 24th there appears, on page 250, a note, in which I am quoted as saying that wheat can be grown in this country at 17s. a quarter. I have searched carefully through my past writings, to see where I have been guilty of such fantastic folly, and have failed to find any such statement.
In regard to mechanized farming, not only do I refuse to publish my own costings in the last eighteen months, since I have been working with caterpillar tractors, but while giving full credit to their work, I am extremely chary of accepting as final the costings of others. In this country we do not yet know enough to be able to say that average costings, including depreciation of modern implements can be accurately relied on. It may be and probably is possible under favourable conditions to grow wheat at 30s. to 35s. a quarter, but even so our climatic risks cannot make us certain of harvest costs, or the quality of the grain itself.
I should like to presume upon your space, to make one more comment on what your agricultural correspondent has (admittedly with reservations) said about a 1,000 acre farm being able to provide an £8,000 profit growing wheat. Not even the most a priori amateur should have the temerity to suggest that you could continuously grow wheat as a single crop, on 1,000 acres of land, without fallow or variation. I mention this because it is one of the errors into which townsmen are apt to be misled by considering the soil of England as if it were a factory at Detroit.—I am, Sir, &c.,
LYMINGTON.
2 Paper Buildings, Temple, E.C.4.
[Sir W. Beach Thomas writes : I am sorry if Lord Lymington was misquoted. He has misunderstood the figures I gave. They were intended as a reductio ad absurdum of the claims of the mechanizers. Lord Lymington will perhaps use this occasion to interpret a puzzling passage in his provocative and able book Hoof, Horn and Corn. While belittling the third, he says : " Mechanized wheat growing might produce a fair profit of 35s. to 40s. a quarter." Is " of " a misprint ? It has puzzled many readers. One of the mechanizers told me this week that his friends could produce wheat at 20s. a quarter. In the best mechanized experiment of which I have seen the precise figures, wheat was grown consecutively for four years (on Mr. Henry Ford's estate in Essex). The yield in the second year was six and a half quarters.]
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