HOW TO INCREASE ARABLE AREA 119 



undoing what they did then ; the more so where the 

 land has matured into really good pasture. We are 

 satisfied that a sense of real security against an undue 

 fall in the gross money return to arable land is abso- 

 lutely essential if farmers are to be persuaded to plough 

 up much land. Nothing short of this will do, unless it 

 be compulsion. 



Various proposals have been made in order to get the 

 grass ploughed up. 



60. The proposal of a Minimum Guarantee for 

 Wheat has been much discussed among agriculturists 

 in recent years, and was advocated by Sir Herbert 

 Matthews, the Secretary of the Central Chamber of 

 Agriculture, in his evidence before us, and by other 

 mtnesses. Lord Milner's Committee, in their In- 

 terim Report, July 1915, recommended that the State 

 should guarantee 455. a quarter for all marketable 

 home-grown wheat for a period of four years. It was 

 suggested that any payment to the farmer should be 

 regulated by the difference between 455. and the 

 Gazette average price of wheat for the year in which 

 the wheat is harvested, the farmer being left free to 

 dispose of his produce in the open market. The 

 recommendations of Lord Milner's Committee were 

 designed to meet the circumstances of the present war 

 and to safeguard the country from what was then 

 considered the urgent danger of a shortage in the 

 supphes of food. 



61. Our objects are somewhat different, because 

 they are permanent and not temporary, but we have 

 little doubt that, if Lord Milner's recommendations 

 had been adopted, and had the weather been favour- 



