8o Agriculture and the Community. 



associations and societies. That work ought to go on as 

 it docs to-day, and under the control of the scientific 

 workers. The Committees may do much to assist in such 

 work, and in making the results known, or directly by 

 applying proved results in the land farmed under their 

 direction. What I have in view is developments on the 

 economic side. We ought to have demonstration farms 

 of various kinds run on economic lines, the whole results 

 of which would be available for the information of those 

 interested in the industry. We might describe this as 

 experimenting in the economics of agriculture, and there 

 is urgent need that we should have some more exact 

 knowledge as to the economics of agriculture. On the 

 scientific side we have a large body of exact and valuable 

 information; on the economic side we are still floundering 

 about in the regions of surmise and guesswork. In one 

 direction we ought to have bold and courageous 

 experiment, and that is in large scale production. There 

 are a few large farms in this country worked intensively, 

 but it is difficult to get figures to show the relati^•e cost 

 of production and output per units of labour and capital 

 employed, so that comparison may be made with the typical 

 farms ranging round 200 acres. Most authorities are 

 agreed that the least economic unit for farming is 100 to 

 300 acres. In England and Wales we have 69,716 

 holdings of from 100 to 300 acres, occupying 11,792,000 

 acres or 45 per cent, of the cultivated land. This gives an 

 average size of 169 acres. Obviously if the authorities are 

 right in their contention that these are uneconomic units 

 for the employment of capital and labour, we ought as a 



