Country Life and Sport
A NEW FARM SCHEME IN LONDON.
Some keen agriculturists, including the originator of the most intensive farm ever attempted in England, are concerning themselves with a scheme that should interest Londoners or other townsmen as much as farmers. The idea comes also within the articles of the new League of Health, and will receive its encouragement. It consists, in the first instance, in the setting up of shops in London which are supplied directly from the farms. One amateur farmer in the South has already started with a London shop, that bears a very flourishing appearance ; and there is a real chance of a steady development of the idea. Historically, one of the first ex- amples was a retail shop opened in Maidstone by Sir Charles Delme Radcliffe in connexion with his intensive farm in the neighbourhood. Another amateur—using the word again in its full derivative and Gallic sense—has repeated the idea by connecting his farm with a retail shop in the Paddington neighbourhood. The object is much wider than the mere elimination of middlemen's profits and the provision of fresher food, with a trustworthy guarantee, to residents in the town. Some of these pioneers hold that they have found a substitute for co-operation. Their rough idea, to which some previous reference has been made in this place, is that the bigger farm, sufficiently well organized and capitalized to establish a market or a number of shops in the town, can form a nucleus for any number of " satellite" small farms. It can find out by its practical experience just what is wanted in the town— for example, what sort of fowl, what sort of sausage or even what sort of bread—and act as an unpaid selling agent for the smaller men. It can ensure them an immediate sale and inunediate payment (a most important thing for the small- holder), and can proVide them with the best information as to the most paying form of production.
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