2SO SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



as I have defined and envisaged that interest, this system suffers from 

 every conceivable defect. In the first place, speaking quite generally, 

 the permanent grass farms contribute nothing more valuable than inferior 

 hay to the winter ration ; they aff'ord the minimum of flexibility, and 

 maintain the minimum of acreage in a ploughable condition. Permanent 

 grass farms serve as an excuse for an immense amount of national and 

 private laxity, because in brief, however bad they are they generally have 

 some slight earning capacity, and that with the minimum of trouble to 

 anybody — landlord, agent or farmer. Thus these farms frequently 

 stand on land in urgent need of drainage and of lime, and so in the main 

 they continue to stand.* It is perhaps the greatest tragedy of British 

 agriculture that even the poorest of poor grass has some earning capacity. 

 Milk production on permanent grass farms, and especially on those 

 deficient in lime and phosphates — and they are many — and paiticularly 

 where the stationary night paddock figures prominently in the manage- 

 ment, stand as the best example I know of ultra-dependence on imported 

 feeding stuffs and exaggerated waste of the manurial residues from such 

 feeding stuffs : waste as such down the drain, and waste because of 

 extraordinarily inept grassland management (on this latter point I will 

 enlarge in a moment) ; waste also of the potential fertility tied up in 

 the sods of the night and other more heavily dunged and urinated 

 paddocks. 



At this point I would urge that unless we know the number of farms 

 and the gross acreage of such farms operating on each of the four systems 

 I have enumerated we know next to nothing as to how this country stands 

 relative to potential food production. Furthermore, schemes for helping 

 the farmer via commodity subsidisation and by planned marketing 

 cannot be assessed in their influence on the maintenance and enhance- 

 ment of soil fertility — and that is what matters above all things — unless 

 we know the systems of farming under which the assisted commodities 

 are being predominantly produced. How much quota wheat, for example, 

 is being produced respectively on arable farms, nondescript farms, or 

 on ley farms ? Where is most of the milk being produced — -and this is 

 a matter of fundamental national importance in the interest alike of the 

 health of the cattle and of the children of this country — on nondescript 

 farms, permanent grass farms, or on ley farms .'' Where is most of the 

 permanent grass of the country, and where is the best and where the 

 worst — on nondescript farms, or on permanent grass farms ? These are 

 all essential facts to be known in the formulation of a long-term national 

 policy for agriculture. The facts are only on the land, the agricultural 

 statistics cannot give anything approaching a full answer to any one of 

 these questions. The answer to these questions, and to equally important 

 questions connected with facilities at the farmstead and over the fields 

 (watering, drainage, and the condition of fences), can only be given by 



* Rice Williams (see ' The Growing Danger of Lime Depletion in Welsh Soils, ' 

 Welsh J. Agric, 1937) ^^^ estimated that the permanent grass and arable land 

 of Wales alone require at least i| million tons of Ume to bring the lime status 

 to a satisfactory level. The distribution of lime for England and Wales together 

 under the Land Fertility Scheme has not, up to date, been materially in excess 

 of one million tons. 



