The Agric ulture Bill
WHATEVER criticisms may be directed against Major Elliot's Agricultural Marketing Bill as a means for dealing with the desperate position of the farmers to-day, no one can say that it is not bold and far- reaching. And certainly no measure that was not bold and far-reaching would be adequate to the occasion. For a dozen years the condition of agriculture has been going from bad to worse, and since 1929 the deterioration has been catastrophic. World prices of agricultural products have fallen to one half of the 1929 figures. Goods not improperly described as the "bankrupt stocks " of foreign countries have been dumped on the English market to compete with the home product, and sudden slumps in prices may at any moment sweep away the farmer's profit. What is needed in agriculture, as in other spheres of industry, is a plan of action—a plan in this case to secure to the farmer satisfactory access to the great markets which lie at his door and to prevent such accumulations of unwanted goods that the producer cannot get a remunerative price—a plan, that is to say, that will do justice to the farmer without creating scarcity or unduly raising the prices to the consumer.
Major Elliot has produced his plan in a Bill which the Socialists scornfully refuse to call a "Socialist measure," though one organ of Conservative opinion declares that it is "the virtual end of individualism in whatever branches of agricultural production are brought within its scope." He begins by extending the principle of the Addison Act of 1931, which enabled producers in any given area to combine in setting up an agricultural marketing board for controlling the sale of a product in their area, and would now enable " development boards" to be set up to regulate the production of "secondary products "—such as bacon, ham and canned fruits. But the two most prominent features of the Bill are those which give 'powers to the Board of Trade to regulate imports, and to the Board of Agriculture to regulate the sales of home products both in reSpect of quantity and quality. The first of these powers may be applied if there is already in existence or in preparation an agricultural marketing scheme affecting some branch of the industry at home, and if it appears that the scheme cannot be effective without regulation of imports. How many interests are likely to be affected. by such an order is indicated by the framers of the Bill, which requires that the Board of Trade shall "have regard to the interests of consumers " and to the effect it is likely to have upon our relations with foreign countries. By the first method of regulation, then, the home producer is protected against excessive foreign importation ; by the second, home producers are protected against one another.
It ' will be seen that immense powers- are conferred, first, upon the Government, to control specified imports and-to Tegulate the sales of home products, and, secondly, upon Development Boards to control and if necessary check production. Everything will depend on how the powers are used. They are being asked for in an emer- gency, and there is some danger in legislating for normal times in the atmosphere an emergency creates. It is a serious matter, moreover, to add new quotas to the quota systems with which the world is already cursed. To impose them temporarily and in part for bargaining pur- poses may be defensible, but quota-bargaining, like tariff-bargaining, has a depressing history. The ideal of a world regulation of supplies which lies behind the Socialist plan of food purchases by Import Boards is also implicit in Major Elliot's plan, which goes half-way along the same road with the Socialists. But the Socialist plan would at least control the whole situation so far as Britain is concerned. Major Elliot would only control it nega- tively by restrictions—a policy which further compels him to take powers to check domestic sales—and he will inevitably get into trouble with the exporting countries unless he provides for the closest co-operation with them. At the very least an undertaking should be given that the problem of supplies and their regulation will be discussed in the spirit of give and take at the World Economic Conference.
In the speech in which Major Elliot moved the second reading he passed extremely lightly over the interests of the consumer. In alluding to protective measures which have already been taken by the Government, he said that it had been able to secure a rise of 20 or 30 per cent. In wholesale prices without raising the level of retail prices by more than 2 or 3 per cent. That was possible at a time when there was a big margin between retail and wholesale prices owing to the recent swift fall a the latter. It would not be possible when prices generally are either stable or rising. It is a legitimate object on the part of a government to attempt to prevent such a glut of food products of any kind that the production of food ceases to be profitable. But if the result of restriction were to produce scarcity, or indeed anything short of full suffi- ciency, there would be an outcry amongst that vast majority of our population which lives in towns. After all, the manual worker is hit by the present crisis not much less severely than the farmer. Indeed a recovery in the purchasing-power of the great industrial centres would go far in itself towards solving the farmers' problem. Schemes of controlled currency reflation are in the air, and if they were adopted the farmer would immediately benefit. Unwisely applied the powers given to Ministers under the new Bill may easily drive the pendulum far in the opposite direction and benefit one industry, agriculture, unfairly at the expense of all the rest. Parliament will need to be perpetually vigilant not only- during the passage of the Bill, but even more so when it comes into operation.
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