•jo A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



the price to be fixed for wheat, they naturally 

 produced what paid them best. 



After the Armistice, resting from their patri- 

 otic labours, they farmed, not to meet national 

 needs, but, like most business men, for private 

 gain. As Cultivation Orders ceased to be issued 

 to plough up grass land, many a field which 

 might have grown wheat was ploughed for 

 barley, for which brewers were offering ioos. 

 per qr., or was sown with grass seed. 



A cleverly written paper presented before the 

 Royal Commission on Agriculture, by the 

 National Farmers' Union — which was probably 

 written in the office of the Institute for Research 

 in Agricultural Economics in Oxford — spoke 

 learnedly of the Law of Diminishing Returns. 

 The Law of Diminishing Returns, forsooth ! 

 when we were steadily losing our place as the 

 premier country in the world for wheat pro- 

 duction per acre ; when Denmark was yielding 

 47 '5 bushels per acre; the Netherlands 37*2 

 bushels; and Great Britain only 28*5 bushels per 

 acre ; and when in a county familiar to me the 

 production to-day is only 3 qrs. per acre, exactly 

 the same as Arthur Young reported it to be 

 1 40 years ago ! And as to wages, how 

 was it that in 19 19 enterprising Scotch farmers 

 in Forfar could pay their ploughmen £$ a 

 week, plus allowances — equivalent in all to 

 £190 a. year — and yet stand the pressure of £3 

 an acre for rent, whilst English farm workers 



