M.—AGRICULTURE 215 
control of home produced and imported commodities, it is now possible 
to strike a general balance based on the principal, and still effective, of 
all the foregoing items in their reaction upon the producer. At levels 
current now or in 1934-5, it reads, for Great Britain, approximately as 
follows : 
Credit Debit 
‘Wheat deficiency payments’ . {7,180,000 4 
Sugar-beet subsidy (calculated at 
£7 per acre) : j . £2,820,000 2 
Meat subsidy . ; ; .  £3,300,000 3 
Milk grants. .  £1,600,000 4 
Smallholdings and allotments. £900,000 
Afforestation . £450,000 
Ministry of Agriculture, Scottish 
Department and Development 
Commission , A .  £2,500,000 
Local taxation reliefs i . £15,000,000 
Wages Boards. : ; 4 ‘ 2 £10,250,c00 
NET GaIN : : . + £23,500,600 
(1) Cereal year ending September 1934 (official estimate for 1934-5 
= £6,865 ,000) 
(2) Year ending March 1935. 
(3) Calculated for year ending September 1935: future commit- 
ments estimated at {4,000,000 per annum. 
(4) Year ending March 1935: exclusive of officially returnable 
advances. 
In reviewing these figures, it must be remembered that the official 
index-number applicable to agricultural commodities produced at home 
_ now stands at only some few points above the rg11-13 parity, while, 
with labour costing double what it did in 1914, and the price of many 
requisites increased by 50-70 per cent, the weighted average cost of pro- 
duction lies in the region of 50 per cent above the 1g11—13 level. The 
_ margin to be bridged, therefore, exeeds several times over the credit 
balance revealed above, which, in round figures, may be taken as equi- 
} valent to some 15S. an acre. 
While taking care not to impinge seriously upon the more practical 
aspects of the question to be dealt with by other speakers, it will perhaps 
_ be appropriate if I illustrate by local example, derived from such a typical 
arable area as Norfolk, the results of State assistance. This is the soil 
which, in ancient times, according to that great Norwich medico-antiquary, 
_ Sir Thomas Browne, protected certain ‘ minor monuments from the drums 
: 
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and trumpets of three conquests.’ It has subsequently had to endure 
a similar number of economic assaults upon its own productivity. 
Here, in 1934, the 990,000 acres of farmed land derived, in round figures, 
the following major pecuniary advantages: ‘ wheat deficiency payments ’ 
(calculated on the Wheat Commission’s official basis of 3s. 11-074d. per 
