02 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



farming is probably more economical and more efficient 

 than small farming. There is a good deal of dispute about 

 this and there are distinctly two schools of thought among 

 rural reformers. It is undisputed that crops, especially 

 cereals, cattle, sheep,* and in the future probably beetroot, 

 are best produced on a large scale. It is also undisputed 

 that fruit, vegetables and flowers, eggs and fowls, pigs, 

 milk and dairy produce can be very efficiently produced 

 by small farmers. 



But there is a large school of thinkers who hold that 

 even these things can be still better produced on a large 

 scale. If this be true much of the economic case for small 

 holdings falls to the ground. This school maintains that 

 agriculture is no exception to the rule obtaining throughout 

 industry of the greater economy and efficiency of large- 

 scale production. It brings evidence to show that, however 

 good the produce of highly-skilled small holders may be, 

 large farmers actually produce something still better, and 

 that this is so even in the case of fruit, fowls, etc., which are 

 the small holder's forte. At the fruit shows the finest fruit 

 is shown by the farmers, not by the small holders. The 

 vegetables and eggs produced by the latter are largely the 

 result of the work of the wives, who are unpaid and the 

 value of whose labour should be taken into account in any 

 fair comparison. 



The best size for a holding, they say, has been proved to be 

 between 300 and 500 acres. Estates with only a few farms of 

 more than 300 acres have suffered less from reduction in rent- 

 rolls than those where the farms were larger. But this is be- 

 cause few farmers have sufficient capital to support a large 

 farm. With sufficient capital a farm of a 1,000 acres would 

 usually give better results than if it were worked separately 

 as two farms of 500 acres. One thousand acres, however, is 

 probably about the maximum which one man can conveniently 

 manage, and landowners employing experienced farmers to 

 farm their land, instead of letting it out to tenants, have the 

 best results when the farms do not exceed 1,000 acres in size. 



* But the development of the co-operative management of herds 

 mi<*ht place small holders on very nearly the same footing as the 

 large farmer even in this respect. 



