A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
IOFTEN wonder what politicians have in mind when they refer, as many of them did in this week's debate on agriculture, to "the farming community." Twenty years ago it would have been a comparatively easy question to answer; farmers then were stock figures in whose gaitered, whiskered exteriors and rustic speech contributors to Punch had during fifty years- found it necessary to make only negligible modifications. But since 1939 the farming community has undergone many sweeping changes. Sir Leslie ,(" Groundnuts") Plummer's intervention in the debate to complain about the small profit he had made on his cabbages was a reminder that much new blood has come into the industry, and with it new capital. But more fundamenTal, perhaps, are the changes which have taken place in the outlook of the traditional farmer.
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