KOTA1. COMMISSION OH AGRlCULTfRE. 



. I'.'!'.' 



SIR UASIU. HAI.L, K.C B., K i: B 



nie<l. 



through tin- Corn Production Act the security of a 

 ininimuiii wage and a minimum guarantee of price*. 

 Imt that actual price* and wage* mint then bo 

 u<inod by the piny of the market. 



(THii confluilrs Ihr rriilfnff-in-rhirf.) 



l.nirman : Sir Daniel haa been kind enough to 

 turnih a prdcij of evidence which ho propose* to 

 Hive. With your permission, I will take it that you 

 have nil rend it, a* you have it bet.. re you. ami will 

 not trouble to rend it over, but invite qOMttoM 



8. Sir U'i/iiain Aihley: Sir Daniel, would yon be 

 H.HH! enough to expand a little the concluding words 

 of the third paragraph-' You say that: "The in- 

 dustry as a whole will remain profitable, provided 

 the fluctuation* of price aro not allowed to go below 

 certain limit* which would just cover tho average 

 working costs"? In one's own mind, one classifies 

 the cost* of a farm as rent using that widely for 

 the rent paid to the landlord, tho rates, taxes, and 

 outgoings of that description. Then labour, the 

 labour outgoings per aero. Then, one has a series of 

 charges which one usually calls tradesmen's bills 

 manure, feeding stuffs, and things of that description. 

 You have repairs and renewals of all descriptions. 

 Then you have your depreciation and interest upon 

 capital. Those lire the items on which I classify my 

 f.irin expenditure. 



9. That corresponds with the ordinary sense of 

 costs in business; but I thought, from the course of 

 your argument here, you were using " costs " in that 

 sense which includes both interest on farmer's capital 

 and profit of some magnitude to tho farmer P No. 

 Not from the point of view that I was then consider- 

 ing. Suppose one. came to the conclusion that the 

 actual out-of-pocket expenditure over a term of years 

 was in the neighbourhood of 60s. a quarter, then I say 

 that the guarantee that we want to see under the 

 Corn Production Act is not .1 guarantee that would 

 have anything to do with profits or return upon 

 capital, 'but is tho kind of guarantee which would 

 prevent losses when the market prices fell below that 

 level. It does not obviate losses in certain year*. 



10. But if the object is to secure n profit, the farmer 

 must receive something beyond cost as so defined, or 

 else he obviously will not continue in business ?- 

 Kxactly. 1 am' not contemplating that particular 

 guaranteed price to be the maximum price. I am 

 only looking to it as the insurance of bad years. 1 inn 

 assuming that in the majority of years the natural 

 market price is above that point, and that it 

 is the prospect of those world market prices which 

 keeps the man in the business, and which is the 

 'jptation to him to embark his capital and to have 

 your guarantee to prevent the sort of thing that 

 happened, say, in tho early 'nineties of last century, 

 when corn prices went down below any possible adjust- 

 ment that the farmer could make to meet them. 

 m looking at these guaranteed prices as a kind of 

 insurance against the knock-out blows, leaving the 

 rrmuiier.it ion of the industry to be determined, not 

 t.v them, but by the market pn 



']|. We will "HKUine that wo are |M>UIH|. And you 

 will li-me the profit to be secured through the ordinary 

 working of the market operations. If. <>f coir 

 werr to prove that the world price could never get 

 up to a profit basis, you would have to make your 

 guaranty- include the item of profit. Then in the 

 next paragraph you say: "The State is only in- 

 toresUxl in two things, to maintain .supplies and to 

 enforce a wage in any industry that will provide for 

 standard of living." and so on. Do you 

 M! to imply here " home produced " before the 

 word " supplies "* Certainly, in this casi . I am 

 timing all along, and I think u> take the amump- 

 tinn as the ba.sis of the Corn Production. Act, 'hat the 

 St*U is interested in maintaining the cultivat 'on -f 

 the Innd. maintaining r,-a ..n.ilily intensive agricul- 

 ture in this country, with reasonable extent of land 

 nnd'-r tho plough, and maintaining suppln-. in that 

 WIMP a certain amount of home produced ma 

 and to do that the State is willing ti> upend some 

 money, if ned be. 



12. "But I gather from previous re|K>rts in which 

 you have partiri|tcd. and from previous writ) 



vour own, that beyond the genera) pur|Kwe of s, 

 inir home supplies, you have a particular M.-W 

 . what thow home Mipplies should be*t 

 IN- have you not;' 1 would sai that my own 

 fooling i, and I think I might almost speak of 

 Hoard PS policy in that sense, that in the time of 

 peace wo are anxious to have as much arable land 

 as possible. That ia the sort of supplies that ve 

 want. Wo want tho land under arable culti\;r 

 Hut whether, when you have got your land under 

 arable cultivation, the particular farmer turned 

 to wheat. .r turned it to catch-crops to feed dairy 

 iows. I think wo should wish to leave to the enterprise 

 of the farmer himself. Wo are not concerned, as it 

 10 ensure that corn crops in particular should be 

 grown. We are concerned to see that the land should 

 be under the plough for that reason; and it is only it 

 we have tho land under the plough that we can grow 

 tho corn crops when the emergency, like the one we 

 have just been through, conies. We must have corn 

 crops in time of war ; and it is only by having the land 

 under the plough that we can secure the degree of 

 employment upon the land that we think the land 

 ought" to give us to secure the population. You see. 

 the thing which held us up during the last two or 

 three years, when we wanted to grow as' much corn 

 as possible, was this; there was the land under grass 

 ready to bo ploughed up, but because it had been 

 under grass for so long, there were not the hones, 

 there were not the men, and there were not the 

 ploughs, the houses, nor anything to enable us 

 to put that land under tho plough. We could not 

 extend our corn acreage to meet the emergency in 

 the way that we ought to have been able to do, 

 owing to tho fact that we had allowed thr land to go 

 back to grass, and we had not the other p.aterial* 

 necessary to enable us to switch over to plough 

 land quickly. If we had had tile land under tin- 

 plough, even though we had Wn growing fodder 

 crops, we should have lieon in n different position 

 with regard to growing corn. 



13. Might I ask one very general question which 

 I think will bo in all our minoVr The " interest <>t 

 the Mate," as you iiso the phrase in this evidence. 

 and in previous writings and re|>ort. with which 

 we are acquainted, in a phrase which is. of course. 

 dictated primarily by the lessons of tho war. 

 But suppose, to take an extreme assumption, we 

 could lio sure that the last war had ended war. and 

 that the, league of Nations, or some other device. 

 was able to M-oure us against war in future, could 

 you then state to what extent, in your judgment, 

 it would still IM- to the interest of the State to secure 

 produce, and produce of a particular kind:' 1 have a 

 very strong fooling tht it LM in the interest of the 

 State to have people working ii|ioii the land to have 

 prosperous agriculture. 1 do not think the kind of 

 countryside which has been adumbrated, where you 

 have the 1 towns carrying on mainila< t uros. and the 

 countryside entirely laid down to grass and to parks 

 n nd sporting ostatot*. is a doMiable state o! th. 

 niiinity; nd I would say that it is worth S..MIO labour 

 and expense on the part ol the - Moid that 



state of things ((, tiling alioiit. Thete. ag:rn. I would 

 j.ay il is to the interest of the Stato that tin- land 

 should IM' productive. 



14. l>r. llnnglax : I should like jo ask whether, in 

 your main evidence, you moan to say that the price.s 

 ml the wago.s indicated by the Corn Production Act 

 hear no relation to each other- You mean actually 

 in .the past that, particular range of prices |I,,I was 

 guuranti-ed under the existing Act. and that par- 

 ticular 26s. They were certainly rot calculate. 1 with 

 any reference in one another. 



16. The price bore no relation to the guarantee 

 of w.i.. N". there was no attempt to correlate 



them. 



16. Now the policy that you aiv laying before 

 us, and the policy ol the C'orn Production A-t. i 1 - 

 that of increasing tho area of cultivation, which 

 means bringing into cultivation land that has not 

 hitherto been cultivated f- Yes. 



