496 DISCUSSION 



the relative claims of live-stock and crops. It would have to take into 

 account that factor of which we are now becoming increasingly conscious, 

 the needs of nutrition of the people. We know that certain parts of our 

 population have been suffering from malnutrition and need, particularly, 

 milk and more fresh vegetables. Our agriculture ought to be shifted in 

 order to meet those requirements. 



Take, for example, the silt lands round the Wash rivers and the Humber. 

 Those are the richest lands in the country, and are eminently suited for 

 the growing of crops required in the national interest, vegetables of all 

 descriptions. But as this soil will grow great crops of wheat, which 

 enjoys a subsidy from the Government, large areas are devoted to 

 wheat. If we had a national plan, there would be no wheat grown on such 

 land, which is much too good for that purpose. There is much land in the 

 Midlands where one can still see the old ridge and furrow which took their 

 shape in medieval times and have been preserved ever since. They were 

 corn land, and they could be corn land again under modern conditions. 

 With the applications of power which are possible we could really cultivate 

 that sort of land more cheaply, and to a depth which has never been stirred 

 as yet. Throughout the Midlands there is a great deal of land now growing 

 very second-rate grass which could profitably be put under the plough. A 

 good example of the kind of thing that can be done is to be seen near 

 Newark. Years ago a poorly farmed area of some 3,000 acres was taken 

 over by the Ministry of Agriculture of the time, and that indifferent grazing 

 land is now a wonderful crop -producing area. 



Our planning has got to take all these considerations into account. We 

 are able to make options because we are not a self-supporting country and 

 we grow only a small proportion of the food we consume, perhaps two- 

 fifths. We must consider, too, the possible emergency of war. For this 

 purpose we require a very close survey of the country comparative in its 

 detail with the Land Utilisation Survey, because by the geological structure 

 of the country we are denied broad outcrops, the rapid succession of 

 strata over England from the north-west to the south-east, giving rise to 

 a succession of different soils. As every farmer knows, you may get rapid 

 variations in the soil as you move from field to field of a particular farm. 

 Our survey has to be very minute if we are to put the land to its best use. 



If we are to think of the emergency of war we must get that land in use 

 now. It is no good saying that grassland is a great reserve of fertility when 

 war comes. It may be a great reserve of fertility, but it is locked up unless 

 the men and the machines, and the knowledge of how to work it, are already 

 on the spot. They cannot be improvised. That was the lesson of the 

 emergency campaign to put the land under the plough in the last war. 

 This second-rate land must be got ready, producing now, if it is to be 

 intensified in its production should the dreadful emergency of war arise 

 again. 



There have been many allusions to mountainous land, with a high rain- 

 fall, in the west, much of which is rough grazing with little economic 

 value. That land can be made of agricultural value if it is wisely managed. 

 We know that the population is shrinking rapidly in the Highlands of 

 Scotland, in Cumbria and in Wales, but there are certain districts where it 

 is being preserved by townspeople who come out and bring a new source 

 of income to the small farmers there who let rooms to them during the three 

 summer months. There is one college, for instance, that is developing 

 land of that description by the simple process of adding to the ordinary 

 farmhouse reasonable accommodation for visitors, two or three rooms 

 with proper sanitary accommodation which can be let in the summer. 



