* * * POULTRY OR WHEAT ?
In my neighbourhood, on farm land, rented very low and perhaps paying no dividend either to landlowner or farmer, have recently appeared over a very wide acreage a crop of simple, though unusual, outbuildings. Field after field is decorated with half-a-dozen or so of these useful but rather uncomely erections. They are all designed for the housing of poultry. Instead of carrying a few sheep and cows during the summer months these fields are now populous with thou- sands, indeed tens of thousands, of hens. Nothing is so remarkable in British agriculture as the increase of poultry, though still there is room for very great extension. And the hens pay. It is because they pay that we see the reason of one odd contrast in the price of wheats. I knew of one Kent farmer who sold some poor half-ripened wheat at a much higher price than a neighbour could secure for a beautiful and well-ripened sample, designed for flour. Hen-food, in short, was more precious than human food. It may be that the provision, not of food, but of fodder, is the right line for the arable farmer here as in Denmark. For the first time, so far as I know, in the history of British agriculture, men of the farmer class and tradition are now definitely spending capital on poultry farms of a large scale.
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