AGRICULTURE AND DEFENCE

By COLIN CLARK

T AST May The Spectator published a rather gloomy IA article of mine, which was originally entitled " Agri- culture and Defence." By changing its title to " Agriculture ; Liability or Asset ? " it provoked a considerable amount of discussion and controversy.

The main conclusion seems to be inescapable. The requirements of war and the requirements of peace pull in exactly opposite directions. My own desire is to see a prosperous British agriculture, employing a considerable, number of people, and concentrated largely on livestock farming. This type of farming is suited to our climate and the skill of our people, can be made economically successful, and in the form of fresh milk and meat, makes a most valuable addition to our diet.

But in time of war, a country depending on an efficient and specialised type of livestock farming of this kind would be involved in disaster. In 1934, the year for which I made comparisons a fairly normal year, the tonnage of imported fertiliser and fodder was already in excess of the entire British output of foodstuffs for human consumption.

Let us get the situation in general perspective. In 1934 s we imported 11.8 million tons of foodstuffs for human con- sumption. We imported a further 9.9 million tons of fertiliser and fodder for use in agriculture, which was con- verted into exactly 9.9 million tons of home-produced foodstuffs. (When we import wheat, the flour content is reckoned as a foodstuff, the offal content as fodder for use in agriculture.) The total tonnage of British imports is not known, but this 20.7 million tons of food, fodder and fer- tiliser' by far overshadow all other requirements. In the year 1934 (which we have been working on hitherto, and there are good grounds for regarding as a normal year), iron ore and scrap, the largest single item in our imports, amounted to 4.7 million tons. The entire requirements of the textile industries amounted to 1.2 million tons only. Paper and pulp are also an important amount, viz., 2.5 million tons. A large part of the remainder consists of timber, which is entered in the statistics by volume rather than by weight.

It is clear, however, that the importation of food and fodder represents by far the largest bulk in British imports, though not, of course, the larger part of their value. Most of the imported fodder reappears in the form of meat and dairy produce, which are of far less weight and bulk than the fodder which has been imported. Of the 11.8 million tons of imported foodstuffs, 4.4 million are flour and cereals, 2.0 million sugar, 1.6 million meat and fat animals, 2.0 million fruit and vegetables.

War policy would demand that the imports of fodder should cease, and that a considerable part of the cereals for home consumption should be produced at home, and if our present livestock industry could only keep going on the basis of imported fodder, it would have to be sacrificed. The requirements of war and peace conflict, and Govern- ments cannot have it both ways.

The only possibility of compromise is along the line suggested in these columns by Mr. Bulmer, viz., differential encouragement of different forms of livestock. The sheep, the cow and the horse have stomachs to enable them to live largely, if not entirely, on grass and hay, and could more easily be fed upon the resources of this island. The pig and the hen emphatically do not. They require cereal foods, and in a time of shortage would, unless they were all rapidly slaughtered, compete with us for the limited supplies available. No government which was seriously thinking of agriculture as a line of defence in war would even have tried to increase the pig population. It would have levied a heavy tax on pigs and poultry, and have used the proceeds to subsidise the breeding of sheep and milch cattle. In a crisis the sheep would be our best friend, because he eats little imported food. The grass-fed cow would come second, and the beef bullock a bad third. A limited amount of shipping tonnage can be used to import plenty of beef, but fresh milk cannot be imported. The pig and the hen would be definite liabilities. • Such a policy in peace time would be a serious economic detriment, but once again we must face the fact that we cannot have things both ways.

It is sometimes said that the indiscriminate encouragement of all forms of livestock breeding would be advantageous to Britain in time of war, because the livestock would provide a large reserve which could be slaughtered, and would keep up food supplies for some time. It is as well to submit this opinion to the acid test of arithmetic. If we assume that- this policy was carried to its extreme conclusion, and after the outbreak of war fodder supplies were kept up only for milch cattle and breeding ewes, and other livestock slaughtered, the following is the estimated tonnage of meat which would be Obtained :

000 tons.

Two-year-old cattle ..

• •

•

278 One-year-old cattle ..

x62 Calves Sheep..

•

18o35

Lambs

• 163

Pigs .. • •

• 456

1,274 The holocaust would thus yield 1,274,000 tons of meat, or only four months' supply at the present rate of consumption. If milch cattle and breeding ewes were included, and the country stripped entirely bare of livestock, only about another four months supply, in this case 1,350,000 tons.

To speak quite plainly, in war time a limited amount of ships would be available for bringing food into Britain. Is it more economic to use this shipping for conveying meat and butter, or the enormous bulk of imported fodder necessary to produce these goods at home ? Is it sensible to carry on our present line in peace time, realising that it would end in chaos in the event of war ? Is it not more sensible to build up political and economic relations with New Zealand, the Argentine, Denmark and other food-supplying countries, which would ensure for Britain a secure supply of easily transported foodstuffs ?

There are two other important factors to be taken into account when we are considering the relationship of agri- cultural policy to national defence. Agriculture is an industry requiring a great deal of adult male labour, for which female and juvenile labour cannot be satisfactorily substituted without serious loss of productivity. Unless those responsible for national defence contemplate purely naval and aerial wars, in which the bulk of the country's man power could still be diverted to production, this also makes a case against too close a reliance on home-produced food supplies. Including farmers, and working male members of their families, over r,000,000 men are employed in agri- culture in Great Britain. The output of agriculture is about 4220,000,000. These goods could be imported, at the average prices prevailing over the last five years, for about k18o,o00,000—in the case of meat and milk the quality of the imported goods would be lower. To obtain these goods, about £45,000,000 worth of imported fodder and fertilisers are used.

If for the sake of argument—what I certainly do not propose in fact—we set out to import goods to substitute for the entire output of British agriculture, we shall have to send abroad additional exports to the value of D35,000,000 per year. If we assume that it is possible to export at all in war time—we have assumed that a certain number of ships will be importing food, and they could presumably carry back manufactured goods in return—this volume of exports could be produced by not much more than half a million workers, a large proportion of which would be women and juveniles.

The last aspect is budgetary. Apart altogether from benefits to the farmer and cost to consumer of tariffs and quotas, or of other factors tending to raise the price of farm produce, the direct burden on the budget of financial assistance given by the Government to agriculture has been carefully and conservatively estimated at £34,000,000 a year. This estimate has been made by Dr. J. A. Venn,* who has been

* Economic Journal, December, 1935, page 655.

recognised for many years as a king amongst the agricultural economists, and although I understand that his estimate was received with sniffing in the Ministry of Agriculture, no one has cared to come out into the open and challenge it. There may be—I personally think there is—plenty of cause on social grounds for subsidising agriculture at the expense of the urban taxpayer, but we are now talking about agriculture and defence, not about what is socially desirable in peace time, and the results of all this effort and expenditure seem to be dubious, if not actually dangerous to national defence. How many battleships and cruisers could we not build with this additional L34,000,00° a year to make entirely secure our trade routes from Australia, New Zealand and Canada ?