XVI 

 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 



AFTER three years' wanderings from the Moray Firth 

 to Cornwall, from Norfolk to Cork, one cannot help 

 drawing some general conclusions about the state of 

 British farming and some of the problems arising 

 therefrom which have latterly been interesting a 

 wider public. In this connexion it may be useful to 

 state how little the questions that are most fiercely 

 debated in other places seem to trouble the farming 

 community. Amongst the farmers themselves there is 

 no land question, no smouldering feeling nor general 

 current of opinion that calls for a " policy " ; in the 

 main they would ask to be let alone. But we should 

 like to enter a preliminary apology for the use we shall 

 have to make of the term farmers. Half the difficulties 

 of controversy arise from the fact that each party has 

 a different group in view when it speaks of farmers. 

 One is thinking of the tenants of from 200 acres to 

 500 acres; another of men with 30 acres to 80 acres 

 working for their daily bread ; a third, and perhaps the 

 most vocal, of the men who dominate the Farmers' 

 Clubs and Chambers of Agriculture, men who may be 

 owners or tenants, but are primarily business men 

 connected with land, dealers in pedigree stock, valuers 

 and agents, making the main part of their income by 



other means than sheer cultivation of the soil. 



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