A FARMER'S PHILOSOPHY.
It may throw some light on a present crisis to record the gist of a conversation with a farmer who grows proportionately as much wheat on his immense farm as anyone in the Eastern Counties ; and has for years adhered to the ideal of as many as five workers to each 100 acres. He pays about £300 a week in wages ; and his accounts are strictly audited each year by independent accountants. Wheat in his view is still the essential core of British farming, and no solution of the difficulty that is not based on wheat-farming is worth serious consideration. He maintains this in spite of his economic experience. He reckons his losses since 1921 at a round £50,000, and sees no prospect of a profit or even of a diminished loss in sight. He has paid no Income Tax for some years on his large farm, which is cultivated as intensively as this sort of rather old-fashioned mixed farm well can be. The reason for the loss is quite simple. Costs are higher by 100 per cent. The produce is very much at the old figure.
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