Over-solicitude for Farmers
The caution, not to say apprehension, with which the National Farmers' Union received the Government's recent decisions to ease the controls on eggs, feeding-stuffs and cereals was so extreme that it only just stopped short at the edge of the ridiculous. But Mr. Hector McNeil, in Monday's debate on agricultural policy, went clean over the edge, and in alleging that the. Government " had wilfully destroyed the confidence which existed in British farming " left far behind him not only those farmers who still possess some of the self-reliance which is said to be characteristic of their calling, but even the N.F.U. itself, which has never erred on the side an excessive belief in freedom. Farmers who now have the opportunity to buy feeding-stuffs more cheaply than they can grow them themselves and to take advantage of an increased freedom to reap the rewards of efficiency and enterprise can afford, of course, to ignore such attempts by politicians to represent _ them as martyrs. But even the less enterprising sort, to whom the exist- ing guarantees of prices and markets sometimes give more pro- tection than they deserve, must feel that the Labour Party is going a little too far in its efforts to prove itself their true friend. Does any farmer honestly believe that the present Government is wilfully destroying his confidence 2 The Agriculture Act of 1947, which provided for guaranteed markets and assured prices, is still there and is not likely to be disturbed. The Minister of Agriculture has very recently gona out of his way to assure all farmers that the feather-bed is just as deep and just as soft as ever it was, and that the present Govern- ment has not the slightest intention of changing that. If the Opposition must find some excuse for lashing itself into a fury over the Government's agricultural policy, why does it not concentrate its attention on improving the incentives to farmers to increase their efficiency ?
Previous page
