RATIONAL FARMING
SIR,—If Mr. Heckstall-Smith feels he can produce oats to compete in price and quality with Norfolk and Aberdeen, or potatoes with the Carse of Gowrie and Cumberland, or sheep with the large tracts of rough grazing in North Wales and the Border country, good luck to him and mixed farming. But if he says: " I cannot hope to compete with these low-cost producers, but in order to farm my land according to the rules of good husbandry, I must grow this variety of crops, and the taxpayer must make it possible for me to do so," then I say: "You have no right to demand support from the taxpayer simply because you have an old-fashioned predilection for an uneconomic method of farming." My own view is that the average farmer (and it is not the average farmer who reads The Spectator) cannot meet such competition with the type of cropping described by Mr. Heckstall-Smith. For that reason, in his own interests as well as in the interests of the consumer, he must specialise, but as I tried to make clear in my article, specialisation does not mean mono-culture. By all means let the specialist dairy farmer have his poultry too, and let the poultry farmer rear some cattle, or have some fruit trees, or pigs, or anything else he feels supplements his main source of income.
I cannot embark here upon the question of livestock and humus, but I would point out that many specialist arable farmers have found far more economical means of maintaining their humus content than by keeping livestock. All good farmers, whether specialists or not, realise that at the same time as producing food they must maintain the productivity of their soil, in the same way as a manufacturer must maintain his plant.— •
6 St. 7ames's Street, S.W. r.
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