MINUTES OF EVIDENCE. 



5 August, 1919.] 



SIR DANIEL HALL, K.C.B , P.R.S. 



[Continued. 



you might call any attempt to put on a scientific 

 basis the relationship of one thing with another. 



56. I ask these questions because I thought surely 

 it was arrived at with some consideration for the 

 cost of production, and I thought possibly you might 

 have been able to give us figures from the Board 

 on which you arrived at these calculations which 

 would be very useful? No. I can say at once that 

 there was no attempt to correlate those two figures. 

 Twenty-five shillings was the rate which it was con- 

 sidered then necessary to pay. You could not fix 

 a minimum below that. The other figures were based 

 upon the demands of farmers as to what they thought 

 farming could be made to pay at. We had a good 

 deal of evidence on that point." 



57. You had then some evidence for fixing the 

 prices under the Corn Production Act? Of course, 

 *a you know very well, there had been many repre- 

 sentations on the part of farmers both as to what 

 should be the guarantee which would be necessary 

 from right at the beginning of the war, that is, 

 recommendations made to the Advisory Committee 

 of the Board of Agriculture, and then there were 

 recommendations made by the Milner Committee 

 of, I think, then 40s., and so on. 



58. Yes; but when those recommendations were made, 

 from my memory I take it that we did not in the 



least know what the minimum wage was- going to 

 be fixed at, because the Corn Production Act was 

 not out. Did we? No. 



">!'. So that the farmer was not suggesting the 

 prices fixed, knowing he had to pay 25s.? Of 

 course, 25s. was, even at the time it was fixed, well 

 below the rate of wage which was being paid in many 

 districts. 



60. Mr. Batchelor: Is it your view that if 

 guaranteed cereal prices were necessary for the future 

 these should be on the same basis as those under 

 the Corn Production Act, or whether they should 

 Iw on the lines of what you have called to-day the 

 emergency promise of November last? On the same' 

 basis, do you mean? 



61. Yes, on the same basis OH regards the four 

 times the quantity of wheat per quarter, and fivi> 

 times in the case of oats ; or whether they should 

 be on the lines of the emergency promise or Novem- 

 ber, which, of course, is different, particularly in 

 regard to oats? Of course, as far as the permanent 

 policy of the future goes, the guarantee must be on 

 the average of the whole crop. 



62. Mr. Ashby : At the end of your third paragraph 

 you gay that: " It is passible to take a broad view 

 and say that the industry as a whole will remain pro- 

 fitable, provided the fluctuations of price are not 

 allowed to go below certain limits." itc. Do you 

 moan prices of cereals only:- Yo-,. prices of cereals 

 only in that case. I would say that cereals is the 

 item you use for your weighting. 



63. You will probably remember the Inquiry as to 

 the agricultural output of 1907? Yes. 



64. It was shown there, I think, in round figures 

 that the total receipts of farm produce are not more 

 than about 25 per cent, from cereal crops. And when 

 the Agricultural Wages Board made its Inquiry last 

 year, it found on a number of big farms all over 

 .')()() acres, with an average of over 300 acres for the 

 lot. that in those cases also the returns from cereal 



amounted to just about 26 per cent, of the total 

 receipts. Do you think it is jossible to guarantee i\ 

 price of, say, 26 per cent, of the farm produce, and 

 that that can materially affect the whole of the farm- 

 ing results of England and Wales? Certainly, in 

 thus sense ; though perhaps this comparatively small 

 fraction of the total receipts from agriculture is 

 derived from cereals sold off the farm, it is those 

 i Is which are the things subject to com- 

 petition, foreign competition. We make our own 

 milk market ; we have that entirely to ourselves. The 

 farmer can charge his own price in the end, and 

 will have to be paid the price which keeps him in 

 business. Therefore you may rule that out. There 

 1^ no foreign competition to cut you there, and the 

 industry will adapt itself to the magnitude of the 

 demand. To a certain extent that is also true of 



81MB 



meat. Though you have a considerable amount of 

 foreign competition in meat no doubt marking down 

 the price to a certain extent, the English Meat 

 Market 'is naturally protected and self-contained to 

 a certain degree. The same would be true of some 

 other items of farm produce, but it is in the cereals 

 in particular that we get the big pressure of foreign 

 competition; and, of course, as you know, in the de- 

 pression it was the cereal growing farms which suf- 

 fered. The milk growing and meat producing farms 

 kept afloat. 



65. Following that up, I suppose you would be aware 

 that if you take the agricultural statistics and take 

 the lowest group of holdings, you have the smallest 

 proportion of arable and the largest proportion of 

 pasture, and as you get into the biggest group of 

 holdings, you have the highest proportion of arable 

 and the smallest proportion, comparatively speaking, 

 of pasture lands? You mean groupings by size? 



66. Yes. You would therefore agree that the gua- 

 rantee of cereal prices is of far more importance 

 to the large farmer than to the small farmer, and 

 the importance very largely varies with the size of 

 the farm ? I would like to turn that proposition over 

 a little bit to see how it looks from various sides 

 before one quite agreed with it. It is quite true, of 

 course, that the corn growing farms are in the main 

 large farms. The small farmers, that is, men with 

 50 aTes or under, are very little concerned with corn 

 growing, so it would be true in that sense. But 

 there are certain largo areas such as the chalk area 

 in particular, which are only suitable for corn grow- 

 ing on a large size, and that is where the Biggest 

 single farms in the country occur. 



67. But you agree that it is broadly true that the 

 importance of the guaranteed price varies with the 

 size of the farm? No. I would not agree to that as 

 a general proposition as a necessary proposition. I 

 simply agree to it as a statement of the particular 

 conditions under which the country is farmed. 



68. I am sorry I have not the figures. I have 

 worked them out before. But granted that it is 

 true that the importance of the cereal products 

 of the farm varies directly with the size of the farm, 

 then it must follow (that the importance of the 

 guarantee varies directly with the size of the fanny 



I would say it is not a necessary deduction, the 

 size of the farm. It is a necessary deduction of the 

 circumstances under which men do hold their land. 

 What happens, of course, is this: Thei man with 

 20 acres of land, for example, cannot live on the 

 corn that comes off it, and therefore he has to take 

 to some other form of cultivation. 



69. I think there ia not much difference? But 

 your question seemed to put it as a necessity. 



70-1. In the last paragraph but one of your precii 

 of evidence you say the State is only interested in 

 two things : one is to maintain supplies. You are 

 probably quite conversant with the report of the 

 Royal Society's Committee on Food Supplies to the 

 United Kingdom. In Thompson's estimate there, if 

 you take the total weight of food consumed in the 

 United Kingdom, and the total weight of the <n,:il 

 consumed, you will find the total weight of cereals 

 i- a lout 10 per cent, of the total food consumed, 

 and about one-fifth of that 10 per cent., namely 2 per 

 cent., is English grown cereals. Do you seriously 

 suggest that guaranteed prices which only affect 

 about 2 per cent, of the total weight of food con- 

 sumed seriously affect the total supply of food to 

 the United Kingdom? I should like to verify those 

 figures. 



72. I have Thompson's Report here? May I look 

 at it? (Beport handed to Witness.) If I turn to 

 the table. I find a summary that the cereals account 

 for 17 million calories out of a total of 56 millions, 

 which is rather more than 10 per cent. 



73. I was speaking of the total weight. But if 

 you look at those and compare home supply and 

 imported supply, you will find, I think, that the 

 calory value of the home supply of cereals represent-, 

 only about 10 per cent, of the total supply of calory 

 value for the whole of the population? We have 



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