THE MILK-SHORTAGE
Si,—In your issue of August 22nd you discuss the shortage of milk which is likely to occur during the coming winter, and one of your correspondents ascribes it to the ploughing-out orders. These may have some purely local influence on the question, but nationally speaking the causes are much more varied and deep-rooted than this. Among the main causes are the spring droughts of 1940 and 1941 coupled with the scarcity of imported feeding-stuffs. The summer of 1940 was very dry in the north, and hay-crops extremely short. Then a terribly severe winter followed, accompanied by an unexpected shortage of feeding-stuffs, and succeeded again by a droughty spring and a continued shortage of feeding-stuffs. In many localities these successive difficulties went so near to crippling the industry that it may take years fully to recover lost output, unless a more active policy is pursued by the Ministry of Food. The firm with which I am closely connected takes milk from about zoo farmers, and from approximately the same number of cows the shortage during the past 12 months has been close on 20 per cent., and when to this is added the large increase in the consumption of milk owing to the priority-schemes and the additional earnings of consumers allowing further purchases, it can readily be understood how the shortage occurs.
The ploughing-out policy is not a badly conceived scheme in itself, though there have been many stupidities in its execution. To compel small grass-farmers in the higher districts, who have never handled a plough, to plough-out an odd field without proper direction is nothing but a loss to the community ; they have no knowledge of what to do, and whilst the War Agricultural Committee plough and sow, the farmers have no implements to carry on the proper cultivation that the crops require. Numerous fields in our North Yorkshire dales can be seen which are not producing one-quarter of what they would have done had they been left in grass. On the mixed farms the kiss of winter feeding-stuffs due to ploughing-out is negligible. Indeed, a greater weight of food is almost certainly grown than would have been the case if the land had been left in grass, and if this grass has been of poor quality the present and future improvement in production will probably be very great, as Sir George Stapledon has shown in his very practical experiments.
The blunders lie at the doors of the Ministries of Food and Agri- culture, which do not appear to have any long-term concerted plans, or, if they have, the farmer has not been acquainted with them. By long-term I do not mean more than two or three years, but they seem only to look ahead a few months at a time and in agriculture this is absolutely useless It takes three years to bring dairy-livestock 'fit° production, and therefore farmers must be told now what sort of stock they should produce and keep.
The numbers of young stock which are coming on for the future production of milk is not known to the public, so it is impossible to criticise here ; no official figures are now published, and there may be a shortage or there may be sufficient so far as the layman can judge. But even the farmer is not kept informed of the position. It is not known whether heifer-calves should be retained. No order has been issued as to the use or prohibition of milk for feeding these, and whole milk is frequently being used for far longer periods than necessary for this purpose.
Again, additional rations have been announced for heavy-yielding dairy-cows, but these are issued on the certificate of what the cows gave two months previously. Thus they have reached the farmer so late that a great deal of their benefit to the community for keeping Up the yield of milk was lost. Also an additional ration was allowed in respect of farms where the droughts had burned up pastures, but this again was issued weeks after the drop in yield had actually occurred. Presumably the assumption has been made that each farmer has a reserve of feeding-stuffs on his farm which, of course, With the tremendous shortage, is not the case. Everyone is living from hand to mouth, particularly after such a severe winter. Bin even in the early days the Ministry of Food was negligent in giving long notice beforehand of what the prices of milk were likely to be and have been very vague and indirect in their quotations when they were given Thus farmers did not really know what they were likely to Pet and were very chary of affording the large capital-outlay necessary 10 maintain their supplies—particularly in the face of the successive difficulties outlined above.
The most urgent step now required of the Government Depart- ments concerned, in order to restore the severrly shaken confidence of producers, is to announce as soon as possible in terms that the average farmer can grasp, at least the April to September, 1942, prices. These must be considerably in excess of the 1941 prices for the same period. But there still remains little doubt that there will be a grave shortage of milk this winter for non-priority consumers, the only immediate remedy for which is ample supplies of concentrated feeding-stuffs which should be imported if necessary. To quote Sir John Orr, speaking at Sunderland on August 25th, "Possibly the biggest blunder we made in our food-plans was to allow the produc- don of milk to fall. I hope that as we still have the cows they will be given complete priority of foodstuffs to raise the milk-production to what it was before the war and, if possible, increase it." If the position in winter should be less serious than the writer expects, the public will have also to thank Lord Dawson of Penn for his speech in the House of Lords a short while back. As soon as this was published there seemed to be quite a difference at the Ministries in the attitude they were taking up with regard to milk-production and the proposed slaughtering of dairy-cows. Up to then we were told we had to reduce our dairy-herds by to per cent., but after Lord Dawson had spoken we were told that circumstances had been altered and that what was required was just the weeding-out of definite wasters up to 5 per cent. This is a procedure which one would have thought any good farmer would have followed without
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