M.—AGRICULTURE 211 
was advanced by the Public Works Loan Commissioners, and the high 
rate of interest on post-war borrowings, coupled with an excessive cost 
of equipment, accounts for the resultant excess of annual expenditure over 
annual income. This long-term commitment will, by the final year, 
2003, have aggregated some £40,000,000. As the Ministry is in reality 
paying interest, but not the charges upon the loan, the overall average 
annual deficiency payment will be £565,000, equivalent to £34 for each 
small-holder. At the present time the charge is some {800,000 per 
annum—in 1950 it will be £700,000. The weight of such protracted 
- liabilities, both from the national and the personal aspect, is apt to be 
_ overlooked, and, remembering the economic hardships to be faced, it 
is perhaps fortunate that less than half the would-be settlers waited for 
land. 
The Forestry Commission will, under two separate programmes, have 
expended in fifteen years just under £6,000,000. This is, in effect, a 
variant form of long-term subvention that will shortly begin to yield 
substantial returns as the Commission’s properties become commercially 
remunerative. 
The cattle and milk subsidies officially represent in part contingent 
liabilities which are to form claims upon any levies that may hereafter 
be collected upon imported meat and upon the future resources of the 
Milk Marketing Board. Even, however, if we accept as certain such re- 
payments, there remain non-returnable State contributions, amounting 
in the year 1934-5 to £1,600,000, designed to improve the quality of 
_ milk, to provide for its sale at reduced rates to schools, and to assist in the 
production of manufactured grades. During twelve months ending 
last June, £2,924,000 had been spent on the beef subsidy, which now 
averages £330,000 a month. 
The various post-war measures by which credit has been made more 
freely available to the industry have caused what would, in normal times, 
have been regarded as heavy expenditure. Under the Agricultural 
Credits Act of 1928, a State subscription of {10,000 per annum was 
‘guaranteed to the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation, and this piece 
_ of legislation, together with the previous Trade Facilities Act, has led to 
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the granting of loans exceeding a million in amount. 
While it was implicit in the Wheat (Quota) Act that no expense should 
fall upon the Exchequer, the corollary of an enhanced price for British 
‘wheat now calls for annual payments exceeding £7,000,000, and it is 
clear that the ‘ deficiency payments ’ themselves have, up to now, been 
worth to the producer somewhat in excess of £4 per acre of wheat. If 
the whole charge is deflected to the wheat-eater—which it is claimed is 
demonstrably not the case—the extra expenditure per household must 
be in the neighbourhood of 15s. per annum, or, say, 33d. per week. 
It is with the greatest diffidence and hesitation that I countenance the 
possibility of combining under one head these recurrent or terminally 
fixed payments, for they vary so greatly in their characteristics and in the 
relative exactitude with which they can be assessed, but I may hazard the 
suggestion that, to the taxpayer, their gross weight, exclusive, of course, 
of the ‘ wheat deficiency payments,’ has during the last fifteen years 
