262, SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
and what is his response to them ? How far are they being incorporated 
into modern agricultural practice ? 
It is one of the functions of the agricultural colleges to be the connecting 
link between the research institutes and the farmer. Advisory services 
in connection with the colleges now cover the whole country, so that 
farmers desiring advice have it provided at their own doors and without 
cost. Mention must also be made of the services of the Ministry of Agri- 
culture and Fisheries, the Department of Agriculture for Scotland and 
the Ministry of Agriculture for Northern Ireland, whose various publica- 
tions, journals, bulletins, etc., contain much valuable information. 
As to the reaction of the farmer, one is bound to admit that, owing to 
the inherent disinclination of the older farmers to listen to new ideas, 
the response is not what we should desire. At the same time, the more 
intelligent and progressive farmers are fully aware of the value of the 
advisory work of the colleges and make use of them regularly. The 
whole attitude of the farmer to the colleges is vastly different from what 
it was twenty-five or thirty years ago, and the amount of advisory work is 
increasing year by year. 
This much must be admitted, however, that there is still room for 
improvements in agricultural methods and that much of the farming still 
requires to be raised to the level of the best practice. 
We may state, therefore, with confidence that the difficulties of 
present-day agriculture are not due to the lack of scientific advice avail- 
able to the farmer; indeed, it is even sometimes alleged that the 
present-day troubles of agriculture are due to scientific research and to 
an abnormal increase in production ; even the Minister of Agriculture 
remarked semi-humorously the other day : ‘ Improvements in technique 
are the great curse of the modern world. Some infernal scientist comes 
along and shows us how two blades of grass can be made to grow where 
one was before. Instead of that being the highest praise, it is one of the 
most damning accusations you can make against any man or any country just 
now.’ An amusing piece of invective, but no help to us in our difficulties. 
In a paper contributed to this Section last year at York, Mr. E. M. H. 
Lloyd, the Assistant Secretary of the Empire Marketing Board, quoted 
figures to show that the world production of food stuffs and raw materials, 
though it increased rapidly after the set-back due to the war, had not 
reached, in 1929, the continuation of the pre-war trend. The statistics 
suggest that world agricultural production is, in fact, less now than it 
would have been but for the war. ‘ The agricultural crisis is due to the 
fall in prices ; and this fall of prices is due more to diminution of effec- 
tive demand through a contraction of consumers’ money incomes than to 
any exceptional increase of supply.’ 
It is certain, therefore, that the advances in the application of science 
to agriculture are not the causes of the prevailing agricultural depression 
throughout the world, but that these are to be sought for in the absence 
of satisfactory schemes of collective planning, marketing, stability in the 
value of money and the maintenance of better equilibrium between prices, 
wages and debts, to quote again from Mr. Lloyd. 
Whatever opinion may be held as to over- or under-production of agri- 
