LAND COLONIES FOR UNEMPLOYED
By SIR DANIEL HALL
THE publication of the summary of the reports of the Commissioners encrairiiig into the' distressed' areas raises immediately the question of the extent to which some of the younger unemployed men can be given a footing on the land. Mr. J.. C.-C. Davidson in particular recommends a special form of group settlement the mem- bers of which shall all be engaged .in the same branch of farming and be associated with a common processing and selling agency: It must be regarded as unlikely that any large number of young men taken from, say, a 'mining area will become successful smallholders of the type. They lack that general acquaintance with land and live stock which is the smallholder's chief asset; and they cannot be expected to acquire all at once the art of making a little money here and doing an odd job there by which so many men supplement the income they obtain from their main line of business. In any case they would be entering upon a field in which returns arc low and even experienced men find the struggle for existence exacting. Is there any plan that will shorten their apprenticeship to a new mode of life and relieve them of the buying and selling part of the farmer's business where so many novices go astray ?
The new Marketing Organizations do prOvide a means of meeting these requirements, because they arc based upon the idea of making long-terra contracts with farmers that will produce a living return provided the manage- ment has been reasonably efficient. This is; in effect, an encouragement of specialization, for the producer is guaranteed against one of those unexpected turns of the market which may -easily be ruinous if he his made it the sole, or even the main, basis of his business. For the best work we need specialization ; a complete knowledge of one subject .rather than a working acquaintance with many is generallythe more effective, and pigs, or potatoes even, will provide ample material for a lifetime of learning. When one has to. enter a grown man to the novel business of farming, the narrower the scope of the operations he is set to learn the quicker and more surely can he be 'expected to run on his own account.
Thus the conditions under which a smallholding group. selected from the unemployed can be successful begin to define. themselves. A particular branch of the farming business must be selected and the colony must be laid out with that as its main object. There must be a training period during which the men are paid labourers, but this training may be on. the land acquired for the colony and in part spent in getting that land ready. There . must be a central selling agency, .which may be a grading depot or a processing factory, and the members admitted to the colony must be under bond to supply the factory or to sell only through the central agency. . . .
The output of the factory or agency is the foundation of the colony ; through it the smallholders, individually among the weakest of traders, become producer-units in a large business. But while this one product is to he the chief means of . earning for the members of the colony, .no smallholder must expect to make the whole of his living out of what he can raise for sale—he must rely in part, indeed in large part, on the food he can extract for his family by his own labour from his own land. So in addition to his business for .sale each colonist must have a sufficient garden and a fowl-run, and even a margin of land on which in time he can start some secondary means of adding to his income. - But at the outset the 'colonists must not expect to make a cash return equal to the current wage-rate ; their chief return will be the food they grow.
As an illustration; the equipment of a- colony based upon bacon production may be set out. The faandation would be either a bacon-factory or an abattoir capable of handling 12,000 pigs a year as a feeder to •a more distant factory. Within a radius of five miles from this centre there must be 80 to 100 unit holdings, not necessarily all together but- With a certain amount of grouping. Rich land is not required, bait it must be on the light side, dry and warm. Each holding will consist of 20 acres, on which is erected a fciod-mixing house, six breeding-Sties, and a feeding-house with ten sties for six pigs each. The sties should be of the cheapest construction, so as to be repaired, renewed or taken down and re-erected by the occupier as need be. A little concrete flooringand paths may be required, but all this constructive work should be so simple that the colonists can be taught to do it during their year of apprenticeship.
Half an acre of grass-run will be attached to each breeding sty, the in-pig sows will need two acres of grass, and about two acres each year should be taken up and sown with rape and swedes, after which it is sown down to grass and an alternative piece broken up. On this land the manure produced will go,and green 'meat and roots are produced which are essential to the feeding. Also there will be a potato patch, a garden and a hen-run.
At the outset each colonist will be provided with 10 sows, from which he should be able to produce 100 bacon pigs a year, or more as his experience grows,.and he can select his sows. Each group will require a boar, the property of the selling organization ; it will be housed with a colonist and a fee will be charged for service to cover the cost of keeping and renewal. The food—barley, middlings, palm-kernel cake, &e., fish-meal and so on according to a suitable ration—should be bought whole- sale by the central agency, which will have its transport for distribution and the collection of the finished pigs. It will be necessary to have a supervisor for each colony to select boars, buy food and advise as to _feeding.
It may be assumed that land and equipment, of which water supply may be the most serious item, will cost about £600 per unit, and for this a -rent will be charged, small at first but rising to an economic interest. Again, each colonist will require about £500 floating capital for sows, poultry, food, seeds and other outgoings, and his living wage for eight months before any returns begin to come in. This must be repayable by instalments. After paying rent, the colonist should make a, profit of £1. a head on 100 pigs and should begin to repay the capital loan at the rate of £50 a year. I have said nothing about rent, because in the distressed areas the houses already exist, and the colonist should face the slight -handicap of being some little distance from. his holding. In any case the scheme should not go to the expense of erecting a house on each holding, one of the most uneconomic and unsocial, features of many smallholding schemes, because of the extra cost of building isolated houses with the roads and drainage involved. We want to get away from the idea of a standardized holding, self-contained and available for any kind of farming the occupier likes to embark upon. The essentials of the method are specialization for a common purpose and a central selling or processing agency to which the colonist is bound by the terms of his agreement. The method is applicable to fruit-growing round a grading and pac king station, to vegetable- growing for a canning factory, to poultry-keeping, and to other branches for which an expanding market exists, but it is probably not applicable to mixed farming or to milk-production or potato-growing, which have hitherto been the mainstay of smallholders.
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