Is FARMING DOOMED ?
Some say that 1927 is more obviously the nadir than 1777 or thereabouts was the approach to the zenith of British agriculture. Thousands of farms are mortgaged to the hilt and profits have vanished. Nevertheless the shows improve and the stock improves. What does the contrast mean ? It means, as I see things, that there is at hand the material and the purpose for a great revival. People in towns have grown more interested in the farm, and certainly enjoy an agricultural show as much as any event of the year. The knowledge of science has spread immensely among all sorts of producers. But this material and this purpose will be of little service unless some method is found and perpetuated for ensuring a certain stability of price for standard products. That is the essential desideratum. I once travelled direct from a Fen farm to East London. The farmer, who had spent more than £16 an acre on his potatoes, was letting them rot in the clamps. He could not sell them even at 10s. a ton. In East London, sixty miles away, poor people were buying potatoes at the rate of nearly £10 a ton ! The moral is that sudden collapses in price, which mean absolute ruin to the producer, do no good whatever to the consumer. In the sum of things they do harm.
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