246 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



with the rotation, and next to nothing relative to the basal philosophy of 

 the rotation. The truth is that agricultural thought in recent decades 

 has turned ever more exclusively towards the narrow, too narrow as I 

 think, path of commodities, each considered as such. Excessive con- 

 centration on commodities leads inevitably towards monoculture, and to 

 what we too lightly please to call specialisation, and leads away from the 

 rotation and ultimately to disaster. Greatly daring, then, I have set myself 

 to combat this modern fetish of over-concentration on commodities, a 

 fetish that has revealed itself not only in the trends of agricultural science, 

 but in a very great deal of what the State has endeavoured to achieve for 

 agriculture and which daily reveals itself in the actions and utterances of 

 the leaders of the agricultural industry. 



I think that everybody will be agreed that such is the precarious state 

 of the world to-day, and of this country in particular, that there can be 

 only one approach to the problems of agriculture, and that is the national 

 approach. We must not so much consider what is good for the farmer 

 as what is good for the State : then what is good for the State must be 

 made good for the farmer. That is the only possible approach towards 

 a stable and long-term agricultural policy. A long-term agricultural 

 policy, if it is to be enduring and adequate, must envisage both present 

 and future needs of the State. The success of the policy must be judged 

 in the main by one overriding consideration, namely, the sureness and 

 rapidity with which the farmers of the country (all the farmers of the 

 country) in order to meet any emergency prove themselves able either 

 to pass from the production of one series of commodities to the pro- 

 duction of another, or, radically to alter the proportions of the several 

 commodities produced. 



It so happens, at least it appears to me, that the present needs of the 

 State, and also the more menacing of the foreseeable contingencies, unite 

 to demand one and the same essential contribution from our agriculture. 

 It is not for me to attempt to decide whether war danger, or the danger 

 of our about-rapidly-to-dwindle population is the greater peril ; little 

 less disconcerting are the effects of soil erosion and soil depletion in those 

 countries from which we are wont to obtain abundant and cheap supplies 

 of food. I am concerned with a long-term agricultural policy, the kind 

 of policy that would take at least ten years to put into full operation, and 

 consequently we have to consider not so much immediate war danger as 

 war danger as such, a danger that owing to our island position would 

 seem to be something from which it is now hard to see how we shall ever 

 escape. I believe the extent of the influences of soil erosion and depletion 

 are not even yet fully realised. All methods of countering this must in 

 the last resort react against the British housewife, and must tend to in- 

 crease the cost of overseas production, while taking soil erosion, soil 

 depletion and land deterioration together a vaster area of the globe is 

 undoubtedly affected than is generally supposed. 



Our own rough and hill grazings have manifestly deteriorated : witness 

 the spread of bracken, to quote only the most obvious but by no means" 

 the most serious example. They have become increasingly depleted of 

 lime and phosphates in recent decades, and the same thing must be 

 happening to a greater or lesser extent — and sometimes accompanied by 

 actual erosion — in all the great ranching areas of the world. In framing 



