The Indolent Farmer
ByGARETH LLOYD
IN the Radnorshire hills, where these lines are written, we are seeing the effect of Whitehall's agricultural policy not in changing hues of grey but in the sharp contrast of 'black and white. Ten years ago the hill farmers of Radnorshire were an impoverished bunch of men. Many of them were tenants of the City of Birmingham, which happens to be the largest sheep-owner in the British Isles, and probably one of the biggest owners of an agricultural estate in Britain —some seventy square miles. Before the war the Radnorshire hill farmer on Birmingham's Elan Valley Estate was on a good thing. He could acquire his farm without any capital ; he could acquire a flock of sheep and a farmhouse without putting down any money, and he could live, if he so wished, off the land. His financial respon- sibility was limited to the rent he had to pay to the Birmingham Estate Office at Rhayader—a nominal amount based not on his land but upon his flock.
The same system operates today. Farmer A has a flock of two hundred Birmingham sheep. The sheep are capitalised at 3os. (less than half their market value), and he has to pay 4 per cent. on the capital--exactly £12 per annum in quarterly instalments of £3. The natural increase of the flock is his. The wool is his, and as long as he maintains a flock of two hundred sheep he may buy and sell as he pleases. He occupies a farmhouse and five hundred acres of hill farm, which he can crop or otherwise according to his pleasure.
Today practically every farmer is a car-owner. He has become a car-owner because he lost thousands of sheep in the Shinwell winter of 1947. He received substantial compensation. Farmer A lost nearly six hundred sheep and received a nice four-figure cheque. Farmer B lost twenty-five sheep and received a snivelling contribution. Fanner B is a good. farmer. He tills his rocky fields ; looks after his sheep ; he lays in supplies of winter feeding (mostly grown on the farm), and he builds protective pens for the sheep. He showed that it was not necessary to have wholesale losses even in the Shinwell winter. Farmer A is too tired to grow feid. What little he needs to keep his flock alive he buys from a merchant in small quantities. In a severe winter roads become impassable and the feed cannot be delivered. So the sheep die. They have no protective pens.
Whitehall encourage A by lavish compensation. They pay him heavily for losing sheep, for being improvident and indolent. They enable him to buy a car on the proceeds ; with it, aided by a petrol allowance, he goes on pub-crawls. B has no car. He spends his time on the farm, tills the soil for winter feed and is a good shepherd. He receives no compensation for sheep which he did not lose because he was a good shepherd. Farmer A has several acres ploughed for him by the Agricultural Committee. Here he is supposed to plant potatoes. He puts them in three yards apart in rows five yards apart. He may have the grace to apologise for " bad seed," but he draws his eight pounds an acre subsidy. The potatoes he harvests are probably sufficient for his family and the pigs. Farmer B ploughs his own field, plants it thoroughly, weeds it and grows a fine crop. He gets a fraction of his indolent neighbour's subsidy.
Birmingham, of course, doesn't care. Its interest is merely in the sheep it owns and the watershed which it is allegedly preserving from pollution. In fact, during the Shinwell winter Birmingham was drinking cold mutton broth from the hundreds of dead sheep in the watershed. It was hygienically pure, of course—just as it would be if visitors were allowed to bathe and paddle in the lakes. The distance it has to travel, plus the filter-beds, removes the impurities. Birmingham does not care very much about the farms the tenants live in—none of which have piped water, but all have septic tanks because it sounds good and pure—and the farmer seems to care less. Most have cows, but many get their milk from tins.
Hill farming in Radnorshire (and many other places) will add something to Britain's larder when farmers are paid by what they produce—when the subsidy is on the sheep sent to market, not on the sheep lost in the snow-storms ; when potatoes are subsidised by the hundredweight's delivered, not the acreage nominally planted (with no obligation to dig) ; and when winter feed is subsidised by the quantity harvested and stored, instead of the quantity bought from a merchant. Beef cattle could roam the Radnor hills if the farmer were offered something for the beef. Farmer B shows that good farming is possible on a hill farm ; he demonstrates that with foresight, provident management and hard work he can overcome most of the natural disadvantages. His reward is not tremendous, but he sleeps more soundly at night. When he goes to market it is to sell sheep, and the cheque he banks has been honestly earned by diligent husbandry. Farmer A grows fat on compensation for bad farming, subsidies for Intention to grow, and spending most of his time away from the farm. He, of course, votes Socialist.
The Radnorshire hill farms, particularly those on the Birmingham estate, may be regarded as exceptional, but they reveal a trend in British agriculture—the eternal trend of something for nothing ; the subsidising of the incompetent and indolent and the negation of the basic principle of working and living. Farmer B is not despondent. He has a happiness of spirit, and he knows that his farm will thrive when subsidies for not working are abandoned. Above all, he has the satisfaction of being a good shepherd, of knowing that he has earned what is his, and he may even do nearly as well financially from selling sheep he preserved as he would have done from the bounty bestowed should he have lost them. But his neighbours still regard him as foolish, for he had to work for his money whilst they merely had to endure nature's most tragic sound—the bleating of new-born lambs beside a dead mother.
British agriculture, no less than British secondary industry, needs payment by results. Subsidies, if necessary, for food produced and marketed ; capital. assistance where it is necessary to attain that result ; but not compensation for incompetence, needless suffering and pub-crawling. The indolent farmer needs a sharp lesson—an awakening from the dream world where laziness and fiddling pay the biggest dividends.
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