M.—AGRICULTURE 229 
the fixing of internal prices by the State, combined with State control 
of imports and exports; export subsidies; tariffs designed to raise 
prices to a desired level; restriction of imports, with or without tariffs, 
intended to adjust supply to demand. The list is by no means complete. 
Some of these measures, indeed, are not so much rational means to assist 
agriculture as the weapons of economic warfare, in which apparently one 
of the objects of strategy is to force upon the enemy more food than 
he can eat. 
It is perhaps necessary then to restate the fundamental (and essentially 
very simple) ideas upon which any real scheme of economic planning 
must be based. In the first place, successful planning necessitates the 
accurate prediction of demand and implies an undertaking, on the part 
of producers, to deliver the quantity of goods required. In the second 
place, it involves the fixing of a price for the commodity in question which 
will allow the producer a reasonable, and no more than a reasonable, — 
reward, and only provided that (1) his technical methods and general 
management are reasonably efficient, and (2) the natural conditions and 
economic situation of his farm are reasonably favourable to the production 
of the said commodity. 
That the translation of these ideas into practice must be a hard task 
is obvious. Demand is not static, but is subject both to long-term changes 
and to temporary fluctuations, due in part to causes that are some of them 
accidental and some of them obscure. Planning must anticipate an 
increase of consumption demand, and indeed endeavour to stimulate it. 
Again, agricultural production is still subject to the accident of drought, 
epidemic disease and so forth. The determination of farming costs on 
which, under a planned economy, prices must be based is beset with 
rather special difficulties. Some people feel that these objections to 
planning are insuperable, and that the system presupposes a measure 
of understanding between one producer and another, between exporting 
and importing countries and between producer and consumer, that is 
quite beyond the bounds of reasonable expectation. Indeed, if the 
crisis had been less urgent, the institution of our marketing schemes 
should have been preceded by a period of research, experiment and 
education. 
One must protest most strongly against any notion that economic plan- 
ning is a panacea for all our ills or is any substitute for education and 
research. The main lesson of the Russian plan for agriculture is not, as I 
see it, that the basic ideas behind it were wrong—lI believe they are essen- 
tially right—but that their translation into practice necessitated an increase 
of scientific knowledge and technical skill, and a change of economic 
and social outlook that could not be attained at the rate which the plan 
contemplated. There is a risk, I believe, that we shall fall into the 
same error and suffer some of the same consequences. Another danger 
inherent in planning is that it may be used primarily to further narrow 
national ends, thus becoming only another weapon in the armoury of 
economic war. It is easy to see how it might be used, in this country, 
with the chief objects of increasing our agricultural area merely at the 
expense of that of other countries ; of increasing our home production 
