To establish a National system, the quickest way would 

 undoubtedly be in the meantime for the State to take over 

 existing buildings where suitable, and build others where no 

 convenient buildings were available. Temporary buildings 

 could be substituted with modern buildings as fast as was 

 practicable. The suppliers of any one District Factory as a 

 body should be required at the end of one or two or three 

 years to take over the responsibility of running the Factory 

 under State Control. In the course of a few years we should 

 have an organisation for Food Production and Distribution 

 which would hold its own against the competition of the 

 world. 



A CONCLUDING MOTTO. 



The motto of the Royal Agricultural Society of 

 England is "Practice with Science ": the one without the 

 other is incomplete. Reasoning on the same lines we 

 may say that the Home Food supply of this country can 

 only be made secure by " industrialising " agriculture, 

 and our motto must ever be " The Farm and the Nation/' 

 The farm without any reference to the requirements of 

 the nation is a poor thing, which suffers depression and 

 poverty and squalour from time to time ; on the other 

 hand the nation that neglects its agriculture is running 

 tremendous risks. In a successful and thrifty nation, the 

 work of the farms must be organised for one common end 

 and that is the provision of a sufficient supply of essential 

 Foods for the Nation. In peace times there should be a 

 margin of safety for the Home Production of Food (e.g. The 

 Government may decide that this Country must produce at 

 least 60 per cent, of the grain required for Home consump- 

 tion), and this should be kept fairly high, so that the balance 

 could easily be made up whenever we were forced to rely 

 almost entirely on our own food resources. 



An " Industrialised " system of Agriculture would free 

 a large number of men for production of food on the land, 

 through the vast saving in distribution, and there is reason 

 to hope that this would make life on the land more attractive 

 with the result that the question of Rural depopulation would 

 cease to cause serious anxiety to the nation. 



25 



