**«■■: ■^. 



for 



What do We Realljf Want from 



the land? 



Population^ Production or Profit? by C. S. Orwin^ 

 Director of the Rritisii institute of Agricultural Economics 



^ \A «5 ITH a frequency that has be- 

 ^<| 1/ come almost monotonous, we 

 (f are warned of the dangers, 

 physical, moral and political, resulting 

 froir* the steady drift of men from the 

 land. With equal insistence we are 

 urged to increase the production of food 

 from the land. Concurrently with these 

 two aims, there is further general agree- 

 ment that the cost of the industrial work- 

 er's food must not be raised nor must the 

 standard of living of the farm worker 

 fall. 



Here is a set of aims upon the desir- 

 ability of which all are agreed. At the 

 same time, it can be shown that they 

 destroy each other. Is it not high time 

 for the country to face this truth and to 

 make up its mind what it really wants 

 from its land? 



1. More Workers on the Land? If 

 we are to have more workers on the land 

 there must be more work to be done. 

 How is this to be provided? We can- 

 not take more land into cultivation as on 

 the prairies. All we could do would be 

 to farm more intensively, by substituting, 



many years." 



To stimulate interest among the neigh- 

 bors in better draft horses, the Roths 

 have sponsored several colt shows at 

 Morton. Cash prizes were awarded for 

 the best colts of their Belgian stallions. 

 They breed about 125 mares a year. Fees 

 are $20 for the best stallion and $15 for a 

 cheaper one. The mares are brought to 

 the farm. 



Roths have sold Belgians into 13 dif- 

 ferent states. At the last sale their horses 

 went into nine states. 



Besides raising and importing horses, 

 Wilbur Roth operates a half section of 

 black land. TTiis year he had a wide 

 variety of crops including 85 acres of 

 field corn, 45 acres sweet corn, 40 acres 

 oats, 12 acres peas, 35 soybeans, 35 

 wheat, 20 acres red clover, four acres 

 pumpkins for the local cannery, and five 

 acres alfalfa. 



They rely on oats, and clover and 

 timothy hay for raising horses. The 

 young colts get alfalfa hay and whole 

 oats. Wilbur doesn't consider corn an 

 ideal feed for horses. For show, bran 

 with whole oats and a little molasses is 

 fed to make the horses drink. 



Three fine youngsters who promise to 

 carry along the family tradition for pro- 

 ducing good horses are Maurise, Doris, 

 and Gene who go to the neighboring 

 country school. 



JANUARY. 1939 



let us say, fruit and vegetables for wheat 

 and barley, and pigs and poultry for 

 sheep and cattle. But there is no short- 

 age of fruit and vegetables at prices 

 which people can afford, nor do the 

 profits of pig and poultry keeping sug- 

 gest that these industries can be much 

 expanded. In other words, the systems 

 of farming which would employ more 

 labour would result in over-production 

 and a lowering of prices, and these would 

 entail a reduction of agricultural wages 

 if the farmers' costs were to continue to 

 be met. Thus, while it should be pos- 

 sible, no doubt, to increase the volume of 

 employment in agriculture, it could be 

 done only by lowering the standard of 

 living of the agricultural worker, unless 

 the country resorted to heavier protection 

 of home produce, when increased em- 

 ployment on the land without reduction 

 of wages would be secured at the expense 

 of the industrial consumer who would 

 have to pay more for his food. 



2. Greater Production from the 

 Land? The answer to this question is 

 supplied in the answer to the first. All 

 the staple foods, wheat, sugar, meat, but- 

 ter, cheese, can be imported more cheaply 

 than they can be grown here. All the 

 fresh foods, milk, fruit, vegetables, eggs, 

 etc., are alrpdy being produced in the 

 quantities that the public can afford to 

 take. Increased production might be de- 

 sirable in the interests of national de- 

 fence, but it could only be made possible 

 by a further addition to agricultural sub- 

 sidies or agricultural tariffs, the former 

 placing additional burdens upon the tax- 

 payer, and the latter up)on the consumer. 



3. A Higher Standard of Living for 

 the Agricultural Worker? Here is 

 something which is quite possible of at- 

 tainment. By organizing farming into 

 larger units which would justify the in- 

 vestment of capital in labour-saving ma- 

 chinery, labour staffs could be reduced 

 and higher wages might be paid to those 

 who remain, provided that the present 

 measures to maintain agricultural prices 

 are continued. One man on a small dairy 

 farm can milk and tend about ten cows; 

 a man and a boy working a milking bail 

 on a big dairy farm can milk and tend 

 sixty or seventy cows. Higher wages, 

 yes, but fewer men. 



4. Cheaper Food for the Industrial 

 Worker? This, too, is possible. The 

 British farmer's competitors overseas 

 have standards of living lower, some of 

 them far lower, than those of our land 



HERE is a thought-proToldng artida 

 from THE COUNTRYMAN," Brit- 

 ish farm journal, which offers an inter- 

 esting point of view on future farm 

 policy. The author is an Englishman 

 writing about conditions in Great Bri- 

 tain, but hia argument applies in part 

 to the United States. 



The United States and Great Britain, 

 of course, have different problems. W* 

 ore a sumlus-producing country while 

 Britain, essentially an industrial nation, 

 consumes more agricultural products 

 than it produces. Yet farmers of both 

 countries are interested in raising their 

 general standard of living, there is 

 sentiment in both for maintaining a 

 larger farm population by encouraging 

 more farm boys and girls to stay on the 

 land, and in both England and America 

 there is opposition to any move to in- 

 crease the price of farm products. 



In this article, Mr. Orwin ably points 

 out the inconsistency, for example, of 

 putting more workers on the lond and 

 increasing farm profits and standards 

 of living at the same time. In this 

 country we are learning that the surest 

 way to a higher standard of living on 

 the farm is to maintain better prices 

 by controlling crop surpluses, and to 

 increase the number of acres formed 

 per man vrhich means to decrease the 

 number of farm workers. In the United 

 States organized fanners through the 

 Farm Bureau are working to establish 

 a national form policy that does not 

 promote industrial development at the 

 expense of agriculture but one that 

 does maintain a bolance between the 

 two so as to result in a maximum 

 standard of living for all. — ^Editor 



workers. By the removal of duties and 

 import regulations, and by opening the 

 British market once more to the surplus 

 production of all the world, food prices 

 would fall and there would be a material 

 reduction in the cost of living of the in- 

 dustrial consumer. But it would mean 

 the virtual extinction of much of our 

 own farming industry and those who get 

 their living by it, or alternatively, the im- 

 position upon them of conditions of life 

 approximating to those of the peasant 

 countries of Central Europe. 



To sum up, then, it would be quite 

 possible to employ more people on the 

 land, to increase production from the 

 land, to give the agricultural worker a 

 higher standard of living or to reduce the 

 cost of living of the industrial worker. 

 But all of these things cannot be done 

 at one and the same time, and none of 

 them could be achieved at all except at 

 the expense of some section of the com- 

 munity. An industrial country has got to 

 make up its mind, first, how much agri- 

 culture it can afford to pay for, and, sec- 

 ond, what the object of this expenditure 

 should be. Should it aim at procuring a 

 better balance between town and coun- 

 try? Does it desire to procure a higher 

 degree of national self-sufficiency? Or is 

 it mainly concerned to preserve and to 

 improve the standards of living? 



M 



