THE GOVERNMENT AND AGRICULTURE.

HL Deb 07 May 1919 vol 34 cc487-539

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH rose to call attention to the agricultural policy of His Majesty's Government; and to move for Papers. The noble Duke said: My Lords, I feel that I owe the House an apology for having postponed the Motion which stands in my name, and especially to the noble Lord the President of the Board of Agriculture for having asked him more than once for a postponement in connection with matters which I wanted to bring to his notice. Meanwhile, I understand that a Royal Commission is being appointed by the Government. It is to be somewhat different from the Royal Commissions which we remember in the old days, because it is a Commission appointed not to shelve the problem or problems associated with agriculture but, on the contrary, it is of a new type. It is a Commission given specific terms of reference, and I understand that it is to report at a certain date. I think we are all agreed that a Royal Commission can be valuable. It is valuable because it can focus public opinion. Experienced agriculturists who are well qualified to express an opinion can be called as witnesses, and I think a good many of them will give evidence in support of the views and ideas which the noble Lord the President has frequently expressed. And it must be easier for a Government to determine its policy if a Report is presented to it in a compact and concrete form.

Having said so much, I am bound to add that I do not think the Commission will be any good at all if it is to focus opinion on purely controversial matters—I mean such matters as fiscal policy, land tenure, whether we are to have large farms or small farms, or what the exact size of holdings should be—nor do I think it would be of any value if it were to discuss the comparative merits of the old Domesday Book and the new one of a few years ago. If the members are allowed to discuss these questions I feel certain that the Report will not be unanimous, and therefore, in a sense, it will lose its collective weight. If, on the other hand, it should be unanimous, a great number of people would not believe in it because they would say it represented a prejudiced opinion. In my humble judgment the terms of reference to the Commission should be in regard to the practical and immediate problems which confront us in connection with agriculture; and when those problems have been thoroughly sifted, then, indeed, we can invite the State to step in and assist us if it is necessary.

What are these problems? The problems which occur to me are the following. In the first place, we have to discover whether the output per acre of arable land on an average can be increased. When we have found out our exact or approximate cost of production, we can then compare it with the costs of production in other parts of the world so far as they are known. Our knowledge in this respect will depend largely, of course, on the information which the Government itself can supply. A comparison between these two sets of figures will indicate to us how far we possess or do not possess the world's markets. Simultaneously we must determine which branches of production are most valuable on national grounds. Then, with the economic figures on the one hand and our national needs on the other, the State will be in a position to examine data upon which it can, if necessary, determine its policy.

I turn to my first point—that of cost of production. Under that head it occurs to me at once to ask, where is the waste? I do not want this afternoon to reduce the discussion to the level of that of a Farmers Union meeting, but it cannot have escaped noble Lords that there is an amount of waste going on even at the present time. So far as the manure heaps of the farmers are concerned, at the very moment when they ought to be digging the manure into the soil they are throwing it out and leaving it to disappear in the bowers under the influence of rain. With regard to artificial manures, I think there is an immense opportunity for farmers to discover how to employ them in a more economical manner. At present a great deal of waste occurs owing to lack of knowledge and proper information. I expect that the President of the Board will agree with me in these views; and if this should be the case I should like, at a later stage, to indicate to him the manner in which think matters might possibly be improved.

My next consideration is, What can the Government itself do in order to save in the cost of production? Will the Government in the future regulate the price of these artificial manures and will it ensure their quality? During the war it was the duty of a branch of the Food Production Department to regulate the price of these manures and to ensure their quality. I do not think that the farmers of England have sufficiently appreciated the immense services rendered to them by those who worked in that particular branch of the Food Production Department, over which I think Professor Voelcker presided. With regard to concentrated foods, are the prices of oil cakes and cakes of a similar character to be fixed, and are we to be sure of their quality? Or is the Government going to leave the prices of these things entirely to the fluctuations of the open market? Then, what will be the price of tractors in future? Will they be under the control of the Government or not? It is plain that in a few years time it will be possible for most of the tillage work on the farms to be carried out by a mechanical process. It is therefore vital that the Government should look into this particular branch and assure the farmers that tractors can be bought at a reasonable price, and, above all, that the spare parts in connection with them are at their disposal so that they do not have to wait for months in order to get them. Will the price of petrol be guaranteed, and also its quality? Last, but by no means least, binder twine—will the price of this commodity be under the control of the Government, or are the manufacturers going to be allowed to charge whatever price they think fit?

I am asking the Government and the noble Lord the President of the Board to consider these matters. In proportion as the noble Lord will examine into them he will be able to reduce the cost of production of the foodstuffs of the country. After all, to-day the noble Lord is deeply concerned in the action of the Wages Board presided over by Sir Ailwyn Fellowes. It is obvious that it is impossible for the noble Lord to see the activities of the Wages Board develop on lines that many people would like to see if at the same time the subsidiary industries, on which the main industry depends, are allowed to charge what prices they like for the subsidiary commodities that the farmer is hound to buy. If you let these prices soar too high it simply means that you are diverting money which might be given to the agricultural labourer into the profits of those who control these subsidiary industries. I urge the noble Lord to give us some answer upon what, I think, is a most vital and important matter.

I turn to the consideration of the increase of output of the arable land per acre on the average. May I first say a word on the administration which is at the disposal of the noble Lord. Like every other Department of State, the Board of Agriculture commands the services of trained administrators. During the war it recruited another class of servant. The agricultural programme of each county was laid down by men with local knowledge and standing. These committees, which Lord Selborne originated, are, I understand, to be retained. The noble Lord explained that to us some time ago. If the Board of Agriculture is to make the best use of all its experts and the expert knowledge at its disposal it must blend the cumulative scientific knowledge of the experts at the Board with the practical skill and local knowledge of those who are responsible for the administration in each county. I realise that this is a matter for the noble Lord himself to decide, and I hesitate a little in dealing with it. I should like, however, to assure him that I, personally, as a farmer of a certain standing, have benefited enormously by the advice, help, and kindly interest which those directly and indirectly associated with the noble Lord have given me for some years past. I therefore approach this matter purely in the spirit of good will, which perhaps the House will allow me to illustrate.

During the time that I had the honour of serving under the noble Lord the hours which I found at my disposal were frequently devoted to writing to the farmers of my own county explaining to them the views and ideas of the President of the Board and those associated with him—of course, without giving away any official secrets. I am hound to say that I received a very poor response. But the sequel was this. The noble Lord came down to Oxford and addressed a large gathering of farmers, with the result that the atmosphere of obstruction was immediately removed. I am vain enough to suppose that the noble Lord's success—and my failure—was not entirely due to my inability to write letters, but that it was partly consequent upon the direct personal control and contact between the administrator on the one hand and those who composed his audience on the other.

I now turn to my main point—the increase of output. I wonder whether the noble Lord has any information as to the amount of hay and stray which the urban population are likely to employ in the future. I admit that it is rather a curious question to ask him, and on first impulse he might think it a reflection on the urban population. But that is not my point. My point is this—that with the advent of cheap motor-cars and cheap motor transport, which I presume will be in the possession of people of moderate means within a very few years, it is quite possible that hay and straw, which has been supplied by the agrarian population to the urban population in abundance for years past, may no longer be required. What will be the result of that on the fertility of the soil of England? I think it will make an immense change. Nobody knows better than members of this House what would be the effect on the fertility of farms if the hay and straw now sold was employed and used on the land itself, building up the texture, improving and preserving its water capacity, and in other ways. I would like to dogmatise to this extent. I am convinced—I take now my own county and the Midlands—that if for a period of years the farmers of England consumed the hay and straw of their own farms; employed, judicially, artificial manures; ploughed deep, and paid careful attention to the seed which is now at their disposal through the efforts of Professor Biffen—if all these things were properly carried out over a period of two or three years the output on the average could be increased to the extent of one sack per acre.

When you come to consider the green crops I think this contention of mine holds weight with even greater force. The point, therefore, which I want to establish is this—that if the Board of Agriculture on the one hand looked into the cost of production, and on the other controlled and stimulated the activities of the farming community for a greater output, that margin might be apparent which is possibly absent at the present time. In war time what was the ideal to aim at so far as agricultural development was concerned? If I may take an illustration I will take the unit of one hundred acres. Seventy-five of these acres would be in arable and twenty-five in grass. Of the arable land 70 per cent. would be in gold crops, and 30 per cent. in green crops. On that rotation or balance I estimate, in the Midlands, that something like 1 ton of cereals could be grown, 4 quarters of wheat, 5 of barley, 7 of oats, and some 25 tons of mangolds, 20 tons of swedes, and 6 or 7 tons of potatoes. That would be what the noble Lord would call farming at its maximum for the production of food for human consumption.

Supposing I alter my rotation, again taking one hundred acres as the unit. There will then be only sixty acres in arable and forty in grass. Sixty per cent. of the amble would be in gold crops, and 40 per cent. in green crops. You will then get a greater volume of food for food production purposes, but not necessarily a greater volume of food for human consumption—that is to say, the elimination of the bad fields, those fields which I might almost term Bolshevik fields—fields that will not respond to any kind of agricultural treatment, either to kindness or severe handling. Eliminate those from your arable cultivation and you will probably increase the average yield of gold crops per acre of the remaining land; the cost of production, I think, will be less, and there will be a greater volume of food for food production purposes.

What I want to discover from the noble Lord is this. What does he wish the farming community to do for the year 1920? Are we to grow food for animals, or are we to grow food for human beings? I do not think that the decision can be very much longer delayed. I believe that the House is in agreement with me when I say that there is a considerable desire on the part of the agrarian community to know where they stand. I do not know if I have made my point quite clear. What I want to establish is that the tactics of the farmers depend entirely upon the strategy as laid down by the Government. What is the strategy of the Government? Perhaps I ought to apologise for this series of interrogations. What I want to know is, what are the economic con ditions which govern other countries in the world? Let us take for example wheat. At what price can wheat be delivered into England from other countries in the future? And what are the world's prices for beef, mutton, and wool? If there is a shortage of cattle and sheep in the world, then the price obviously will be high. I think that the noble Lord would then advise us to grow food for food production, but if on the other hand wheat will be dear and there are plenty of sheep and cattle, then the tactics of the farmers should be to grow plenty of food for human consumption. No doubt there are great difficulties in making these estimations, but surely I am right in saying that those difficulties are not insuperable. If we fail to get the information the danger to the State is that we may grow certain foods which we can obtain easily and cheaply from abroad, and on which you will have to put a tariff to help the home producer, or we may fail to grow other kinds of food which we cannot obtain from abroad, except at a very high price, and the absence of the commodity in England itself will enable the foreigner to command the market and charge us his own price.

I can give the noble Lord an example. At the present time the price of linseed cake is something like £20 a ton. What will be the price of linseed cake in the year 1920? If it is going to be £20 per ton let the noble Lord tell us so. The farmers could then be encouraged to grow beans, which are equivalent as a food to the linseed cake, and the cost of which would not amount to £20 a ton. The, benefit would be that the profit to the foreign producer would be saved, and also any profit that the shipper would get on the freight. I am sincerely anxious to find out this afternoon from the noble Lord if any of these contentions, or most of them, have merit and are worthy of consideration. I am sure that the noble Lord will bear in mind that there was an International Agricultural Institution started before the war, over which the King of Italy presided, which Fad for aim and object the discovery of the world's prices. The noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe I am right in saying that that body furnished most admirable statistics. Am I out of sympathy with the House when I say that these are the kind of matters which we hope will form the subject of consideration and discussion by the forthcoming Royal Commission?

I turn to the question of transport. I understand that Sir Eric Geddes is handling this problem. I am sure the noble Lord understands, but I am not quite certain whether Sir Eric Geddes understands, that the farmers do not want light railways, but want cheap motor transport. It has been my duty during the last three years to shift something like 15,000 sacks of cereals. amounting in bulk to from 500 to 1,000 tons per annum. I have done so with one motor lorry and two strong able men, well paid. If that practice became general and not exceptional on the part of the farming community surely the effect would be that the horses now on the roads could be concentrated upon further production of the soil, and foodstuffs lying on the farms could be transmitted easily and cheaply to the great centres from which the food is distributed to the people. The arrangement between the producer on the one hand and the consumer on the other would undoubtedly be very much more facilitated thereby than it is at the present time. I suggested to the present. Secretary of State for War when he was leaving the Ministry of Munitions that it would be a thousand pities if he were to break up that wonderful organisation of motor transport which was under his control, and to which was harnessed as splendid a lot of mechanics as this country has ever produced. There is a great desire on the part of the general public to see soldiers settle on the soil, and employed in agrarian pursuits. I said to my right hon. friend that I could not conceive of anything better or more useful than to employ these men in a subsidiary capacity in connection with the general output of production from the soil. I begged my right hon. friend not to destroy his transport. I do not know what has happened, but so far as I am aware the transport has now been dispersed, and the men who would have been vital to running it have been invited to take up posts in other industries, possibly in other parts of the world.

I am afraid my questions are limitless, but. I am going to ask my noble friend whether he can give us any information upon markets themselves—I mean those centres where the food has to be got to for the people's benefit and use. I know that I am on very tender ground here. I think that there is a lack of access to those markets, and that an improvement might be effected. I know that the problem is a very difficult one. I have spoken to members of the Department over which the noble Lord presides for many years on this subject, and they appreciate the difficulties. I wonder whether in the general reconstruction of agriculture the noble Lord can give us any hints or ideas on that particular matter.

Before I sit down I should like to say one word on finance. The farmers to-day are paying taxes under Schedule B. I presume that a good many of your Lordships who are farming are paying taxes under Schedule B; that is to say, on the assessment of double the rent of the farm. The President has urged farmers to keep an account, and to come under Schedule D, that is under profits, and submit themselves to the same financial examination of their accounts as any other industry in the country. There was a note in The Times newspaper yesterday, which seemed to me official, telling the farmers where they should go, and saying that this company, or association, or body of men could teach them how to keep their accounts. I am bound to say I think that the President is perfectly right, and I think it would be wise if all of us followed his advice, and for this reason. As long as the Chancellor of the Exchequer can get revenue from agriculture based on an assessment of double the rent he remains only an amiable colleague of the noble Lord's, but the moment the President of the Board of Agriculture states that the revenue that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will get from agriculture will depend on profits, and will therefore be in relation to the general fiscal policy of the Government, he may possibly form an alliance both satisfactory to himself and fruitful to the Treasury.

I trust I need not apologise to the House for having brought these matters to their attention. I think some noble Lords are aware how difficult it is to discuss agrarian matters in this House without perhaps associating oneself rather at the same level with those who are discussing the same problems in the Chamber of Agriculture. But if the Government are anxious—and I believe they are anxious—for rural regeneration and rural amelioration I feel most strongly that the problems of administration, of production, and of transport are those which are paramount.

And in directing your Lordships' attention to them perhaps we may be able to remove some of those specious and spacious ideas which the members of His Majesty's Government possess, and with which they regard with perfect equanimity in peace times a deficit on our annual Budget of £200,000,000 I beg to move that the President of the Board of Agriculture should give the House the terms of reference to the Royal Commission on Agriculture.

Moved, That there be laid before the House Papers giving the terms of reference to the Royal Commission on Agriculture.—(The Duke of Marlborough.)

LORD RIBBLESDALE

My Lords, I feel sure that every one here, most of you interested in land either directly or indirectly, will be grateful to the noble Duke for having brought this subject forward. But, quite apart from individual interest in land, I think he justly said that it is a large question affecting the whole of the conditions of the country, and that these conditions will depend very much upon what the terms of reference to the Royal Commission are going to be.

We live just now in an extraordinary age of committees and sub-committees. I happened for some reason to look back to the state of affairs in the months immediately following the French Revolution, when things began to stabilise and when France again began to become a great country. I find that the state of Europe—not in this happy island, but parts of Europe—is just now very much like France at that time. But in France they had I do not know how many committees—287, I think. My point is that apparently in any troublesome times, or when the intelligence of a man is distracted, there is an extraordinary soothing syrup to the individual in the notion that either a commission or a committee or—still more popular—a sub-committee is going to be appointed. When that is going to be done everybody goes away feeling quite sure that it will be for the best.

I have sat on one or two Royal Commissions and on one or two Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry, and my confidence is not very great in the Reports of Royal Commissions. The Commissions that I have had to do with since I have observed this world either report so little that the Government say, "It is not worth doing anything," or report so much that they say, "It is perfectly impossible to tackle this and we should probably be turned out at the next Election if we did." That is my opinion about Commissions. Still, I suppose we are in for an Agricultural Commission, and I am therefore very glad that the noble Duke has brought this matter before the House, and has also invited the President of the Board of Agriculture, if he is at liberty to do so, to tell us something about what the reference will be.

The noble Duke said that he had asked too many tiresome questions. A question which I should like to ask is, Will the reference of the Commission or the basis of the Commission rest upon an agriculture protected—I do not use the word in a bad sense—an agriculture which has been set going, and which is at present being kept going under the impression that farmers will in any way be guaranteed their losses? The noble Duke asked "What is the strategy of the Government as regards this?" Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to tell us. It must be laid down perfectly clearly, if this Commission's Report is to be worth the paper it is printed on or the time devoted to it, whether we are in for a subsidised agriculture or an agriculture dependent on the reigning prices and the ordinary rules of supply and demand which directed or misdirected—I do not care which; you can have it either way—agriculture in pre-war days.

I remember very well two or three debates that we had in this House on the state of agriculture in the early times of the war. There was one debate—I think it was before the Corn Production Bill—in which there was an interesting speech made by the noble Earl opposite, Lord Selborne, on the extreme importance of enormously increasing the tillage area of this country—a speech that I did not like, for I belong to cattle and sheep; I only believe in grass lands. I remember quite well saying that this would all be a mistake, this subsidised agriculture, this persuading lands which were not suited to grow corn to grow corn—and bad corn, and corn which would be very little use to anybody—because it was to get a subsidy; and I remember saying that I believed in tonnage and in free imports for the good of this country. I am quite willing to say that at that period of the war—I think it was the first year of the war—I was quite wrong. If my motion had found favour we should probably not have got on nearly as well as we have done.

But what you have to consider now is what you are going back to. As I said, I live in a fell and grass country, where we have never liked the plough. The West Biding County Council has been very sensible. We have not been forced into much ploughing. We have had to produce very little acreage, and I do not believe we have produced an acre which has grown a grain of corn of the slightest use to the service of man. But we have produced some good turnips owing too the extraordinary raininess of our climate and strength of our soil; and I myself hope, and have rather come round to the belief, that a small patch of tillage on an upland hill farm—100 acres or so, and perhaps eight or ten acres of tillage attached to it, with turnips and with the oats we are able to grow—will be a valuable adjunct to the, farmers, making them a little more self-supporting. Whether that is the general view held in my part of the world, I do not know. As I have said, I am a grassland mail, and am for the breeding and buying and selling of cattle. But, still, we are coming round to that. Not to go back to all these tiresome personal experiences I would again ask very strongly (and I hope we may get an answer), Is the reference to the Commission going to be based upon an agriculture which is to be subsidised in any particular way, or are we going back to free agriculture? That is one question.

The other question—which is rather local—is whether the noble Lord would consider this: Up, in my part of the country there are acres and acres and acres of not quite water-logged fell, but what amounts to land which has been so waterlogged by the water and rain coming off the fells that it is of very little use to anyone. On the other hand it is good land with lots of heart in it; and when I was farming (at one time I farmed 1,500 acres or so) I attacked about 100 acres of this, which cost me with my own men and horses—it took a longish time; we did it in a not very extravagant way—about £8 or £9 an acre. Ultimately I got it done, and this 100 acres which was pitying only £25 is now let as a grass farm at £125. This shows what can be done. But unfortunately we have none of us money enough to attack this land on any real scale. This winter I have been in correspondence with the West Riding County Council and they have sent people over. They have seen samples of the land I have had in my mind in putting this before them. I think, as far as official correspondence goes, though you can judge very little from it, of course, as it moves in a terrible routine of classical sentences, the idea was rather favoured. If the Government could see their way to do something to lend the landowner and tenant money to deal with this water-logged land in my part of the country—I am speaking only of my own estate and of the near confines of it—I believe that most of the tenant-farmers would be prepared to join the landlord by paving a sort of quit rent for the drainage advantages they have received, provided that the money was advanced for the betterment of their farms in this way. But they make the important stipulation that they would only do so provided the land was drained on the local know-ledge of the country. It was drained on the hard-and-fast conditions imposed upon us by the Board of Agriculture.

I had for years—I have just got rid of it—a large land drainage rent of £100 to £500 a year imposed on our estate at home by my father. That land was drained with Government money; it was also drained under Government conditions in full defiance of everything the local people knew. We were forced to drain 4 feet or 5 feet, I forget which. At all events, it was about double what need have been. Putting aside the money which had to go out in various ways, it was an expensive operation. We are sick to death of that sort of thing in our part of the country, and nothing like a loan will be looked at on those conditions. But I would ask the noble Lord to suggest in his reference to the Commission that they should examine whether or not something in the form of land loans on what I call a more reasonable basis—on the basis of both the landlord and the tenant sharing in the payment of the interest on the money—might be granted.

The noble Duke paid a compliment which, having the honour of the personal acquaintance of the President of the Board of Agriculture, I was glad to hear him pay to the noble Lord. The noble Duke said that he had derived a great deal of benefit in his own operations from his correspondence with the officials of the Board, and from the able advice they were able to give him. The noble Duke lives nearer to London than I do, and his experience seems to have been fortunate. I am afraid that up in our part of the country we do not take that view. I have no doubt there will be a change under the noble Lord who at present represents the Board of Agriculture in this House, now that things are getting steadier; but really during the last two years the Board of Agriculture has been looked upon not so much as a vain prophet as a false prophet. Therefore, if I may say so, I hope that if anything is to be done which involves the loaning of public money to localities, it will be the localities who will advise how that money can be best spent, and not the Board of Agriculture.

LORD BLEDISLOE

My Lords, if no noble Lord of more mature experience of the ways of this House is prepared to address you, I feel that it is my duty to prevent this debate expiring. Never throughout the long period that I have taken an interest in agricultural matters have I found the agricultural community in such a condition of unrest and with such a feeling of insecurity as possesses them today. It would appear to me that this is due to one cause and to one cause only—namely, that agriculture, like many industries, is under the somewhat deadening process of Government control, and that in this case at any rate the Government have no plan whatever which is to be followed during the next three or four or more years in working out this system of apparently inevitable control.

In this connection I cannot help wondering what has happened to the scheme which was no doubt formulated—certainly we were told more than eighteen months ago that it was being formulated—by the Ministry of Reconstruction as regards the after-war conditions of agriculture. Surely if there is a scheme, as the result of an enormous amount of energy and enterprise on the part of that Department, stowed somewhere away in the pigeon holes of the Ministry of Reconstruction, it ought now to be produced. It seems to me rather extraordinary that it should be found necessary to set up, as it were at the eleventh hour, a Royal Commission to enquire into those very problems which presumably the Ministry of Reconstruction was considering many months ago. Assuming that no such plan has been presented by that department to the Ministry of Agriculture and to the Government, surely the time has come for the Government to decide exactly, not in the farmers' interests but in national interests, exactly what it really wants. For instance it would occur to me that the very first step which it is essential for them to take would be to decide whether and to what extent it is desirable, or indeed essential, to grew more food at home than was grown before the war. Possibly the Institution of the so-called League of Nations renders this process now quite unnecessary. It no doubt will be suggested—I happen to know that it is already suggested in some of the large centres of population—that the prospective creation of the League of Nations removes for ever from us all menace, either marine or submarine, to our future overseas food supplies. Personally I think that it would be extremely dangerous to budget upon such a prospect. But there are other considerations which are worthy of consideration as justifying a greater development of horse production, and not the least of them surely is the improvement of our national physique, the defects of which have been brought out in somewhat unfortunately glaring colours during the war. Another question which I should have thought was well worthy the consideration of the Government. at the present time is the very crucial question of International Exchange, bearing in mind the many hundreds of millions now represented by the pre-war importation of cereal food alone, not to mention meat.

If the Government has definitely made up its mind—and I cannot be at all sure from the recent utterances of the noble Lord opposite as to whether it has—that an increased corn production is absolutely essential in the best national interests, surely they have got to face the fact which was indicated by Lord Ribblesdale, that a very large area of what I may call second-rate corn land, upon which it did not pay to grow corn under pre-war conditions, will have to be brought into cultivation during the years which are now facing us. This land cannot possibly be cultivated and produce corn at the present or prospective rate of wages unless wheat is to be permanently in the future at something over 65s. per quarter, even assuming that all these new labour devices are brought into operation, and of course more especially the utilisation of motor tractors and other implements that can be used with electric or steam power. But may I in passing draw attention to the fact that these labour saving devices can only be used upon farms of very considerable size and indeed upon farms where the fields are of some considerable size. They can be ruled out entirely as regards the small holders, or indeed small farmers, in many parts of the country and notably in the South-West of England and in. Wales.

As against the prospect, without Government assistance, of corn reaching anything like 65s. per quarter, there is everything to show at the present time that within the next twelve months overseas corn can be imported into this country at something under 50s. per quarter, and this the product not of expensive labour or land such as ours but of some of the cheapest land in the whole of the world, if not virgin soil, and the product in many instances of the cheapest hour. Our own farm labour to-day is the dearest farm labour in the world, and our land requires the most expensive feeding of any land in the world if it is to produce the crops which we are told the country needs. Surely there are only two courses open to the Government—either to abandon Government control altogether—and let me in passing say that when once the Government has put its band to one end of the scale of Government control it is bound to carry through the process, and having guaranteed a minimum wage to guarantee an adequate margin of profit for the products of such labour—it is open to them either to abandon control altogether and leave both labour and the price of farm produce alike to the play of ordinary economic forces, or else to guarantee prices which will move pari passu with the state guaranteed price of agricultural labour.

For my part I am beginning to wish that the Government had never commenced the process of control of our great agricultural industry, and I wonder even now, bearing in mind that under war conditions agricultural labour has enormously strengthened its economic position—it has formed all over the country great trade unions which undoubtedly whatever course the Government takes, will have a great say as regards the future position of agriculture—whether even now it would not be better to scrap that element of control of the agricultural industry which has already come into existence, leaving labour to battle for itself and to supply itself with its reasonable requirements within the means of the agricultural industry. If this is not possible there is a danger, and as I think a very serious danger, that organised labour in the towns, unless a great deal better educated than it has been in the past as to the fallacy of cheap food, may ultimately insist upon the unrestrained importation of cheap food from overseas countries. If the minimum guaranteed wage is maintained and indeed increased, as scents not improbable, and no guarantee whatever is given commensurate with that wage, home-grown bread-stuffs are bound to be reduced in my judgment to something like from five to ten weeks' supply only, and our rural population is bound to dwindle even to a lower level than it was before the war. It would occur to me in any case that anything that is going to prolong the delay in the settlement of the Government plan, be it what it may, is bound to create still further unsettlement in the agricultural industry. After all, farmers have to look ahead, not for one year only, as is probably quite sufficient in most other industries, but for at least four years in order to prepare their agricultural programme.

Guaranteed prices under the Corn Prodution Act, which are nominally in operation for another two years, have ceased to afford any security whatever. The Corn Production Act in this connection, as in many others, is a dead letter and has always been a dead letter. Although, on the face of it, there appears to be some sort of relation between the minimum wage on the one hand and the price of produce on the other, there is no provision in the Act for any rise pari passu, no constant relation between the guaranteed price of labour on the one hand and the guaranteed price of the products of labour on the other. Seeing that a decision is urgently needed as to what time Government policy is going to be, there is a danger if and when the Royal Commission is set up—we all know how very slow and cumbrous is procedure by Royal Commission—of the evolution of the plan of the Government being deferred so long as to create something like revolution amongst the farmers of this country.

We do not want to see the farmers of this country adopt the methods of the extreme Trade Unionists and "down tools," but there is a very real danger at the present time, unless the Government plan is settled, and settled in the early future. I, for my part, would venture to hope if the Royal Commission, as a convenient Government buffer, has got to be brought into existence, that it will receive definite instructions that on this subject at any rate it will be expected to report within a definite stated time. The Royal Commission, as adumbrated in another place, is not likely, I am afraid, to be a body whose proceedings will be greatly accelerated. If instead of being, as I for my part should prefer to see it, composed of a Judicial Tribunal, preferably of Judges of the High Court before whom the evidence of various interests can be adduced—evidence brought by the farmers and the labourers on the one hand and by the representatives of the consumers on the other—it is to be composed, as we are told, of these conflicting interests whose representatives will be in the position (as appears to be the case on another Commission) of appearing not merely as adjudicators but also as partisans and prepared to give evidence, I ant rather afraid that the proceedings will be unduly prolonged and the position very much aggravated.

At the present time I am sitting on a body which is known as the Agricultural Costings Committee, and it is not for me to divulge the proceedings of that Committee so far as they have gone, but, if the noble Lord is expecting the Agricultural Costings Committee to afford any sort of guidance to the Royal Commission as to the cost of production of various farm crops in various parts of the United Kingdom, I am afraid he will be somewhat bitterly disappointed. It is quite apparent to us that the process is going to be a long one and that no thoroughly reliable information can be given by that Committee within a period of something like two years. But, in the meantime, cannot the noble Lord who adorns the headship of the Board of Agriculture give us rather a surer guide than he has done in the recent past as to what is in his opinion—knowing the mind of the Government; at least, presumably knowing the mind of the Government on these matters—the line along which we, who have to farm some of the land of the United Kingdom, ought to move. In other words, is it our duty to grow corn, or is it our duty merely to raise stock as we have done preponderantly in pre-war days? It affects those of us who live in the south-west of England very much We have ploughed up a considerable amount of land, largely because we felt it our patriotic duty to do so and largely because we were told we should be penalised if we did not. Acres of valuable land have been ploughed up in a country which is not well adapted to the growing of corn, where the land is heavy, where a large area of it is very poorly drained, and where the rainfall is somewhat excessive. These are not conditions which make for the security of the corn-growing farmer, and we are justified in asking whether it is in the national interest, or whether it is the wish of the noble Lord opposite, that we should continue the arable production not of food for our stock but bread stuff for human consumption.

I see that the noble Lord, in a recent speech at, Taunton, indicated that, many farmers in the West would be well advised to devote the new arable area, which was originally intended for the extension of bread staffs, to growing soilage foods and fodder crops for their live stock. I do not think, if I may venture to say so, that advice such as that can have any other than an unsettling effect on farmers who have ploughed up land with a very different object in view. However, in order that there shall be no misinterpretation of what I am saying, I wish to make it perfectly clear that in my opinion a great deal of our land in the south and west of England, whatever may be the case in the north, is too extensively farmed, and that farmers who, when they have a good margin of profit from the year's activities take further land and grow more crops on an extensive system, might well be asked, if not compelled, by the Board of Agriculture, to put more capital and industry into the area already occupied. That would undoubtedly tend to the larger production of food of every sort at home. As far as I understand it, that was not the exact nature of the advice which the noble Lord gave to the Somersetshire farmers.

I was interested to hear the noble Lord. Lord Ribblesdale, refer to the question of drainage, because it is perfectly evident to me—and I have studied this particular subject for many years past—that something like two-thirds of the whole agricultural land of this country requires an improved system of drainage. I suppose it is sixty or more years ago, when agriculture was enjoying a measure of prosperity that large schemes of drainage were carried out throughout the country. It is universally admitted now that most of the drains were laid too deep, and at too great a distance apart; and in any case where they did serve their purpose they have become choked up and are doing little or no good to-day. The whole system of agricultural drainage, particularly in the west of England and in Wales, requires overhauling, and the landowners have not the means of overhauling it. I ask, What is the Government going to do in order to enable these necessary drainage works to be carried out? It is quite clear that not only do you fail to get early germination owing to lack of proper heat in the soil, but you also fail to get anything like the output front your land so long as it is as ill-drained as most of it is to-day.

I want to ask the noble Lord whether he would not be a little more courageous in the matter of the enforcement of the provisions of the Fertilisers and Feeding-Stuffs Acts. There has been a large amount of rubbish—I can only describe it as rubbish—which has been sold for the purpose of feeding our poultry, pigs, and indeed our cattle, during the last three years. The Fertilisers and Feeding-Stuffs Acts make ample provision for prosecutions by the county authorities of those who sell adulterated animal foods, hut they have to obtain the consent of the Board of Agriculture before any such prosecution can be instituted. That consent is very seldom given, with the result that very few prosecutions of this character take place at all. It appears that unless there is a certainty of conviction beforehand the consent of the Board of Agriculture is refused. The noble Lord has only to see the reports of the consulting chemists of the Royal Agricultural Society and of the Bath and West of England Agriculture Society to find that these gentlemen have been flooded with samples of highly adulterated foods which are admitted in many cases to have poisoned the stock to which they have been given. This particularly is the case in the matter of poultry foods. In any case the Fertilizers and Feeding-Stuffs Acts are bound to be amended at an early date, and surely in the meantime the existing Acts can be carried out with greater courage than they are at the present time.

If the outlook for the ordinary farmer is at the present moment an unsettled one, how much more unsettled must be the outlook of the ex-Service land-settler, the small-holder, with little or no capital, with a smaller degree of practical experience, who fancies he is going to enter into a state of Arcadian bliss by settling upon some 15 to 50 acres of farm land. If the economic outlook is bad for the large farmer, how infinitely worse it must be for the man placed in such an unfortunate position.

I want to say one thing in conclusion. In my humble judgment, agriculture is sliding down a somewhat slippery slope, while the Government appears to be standing by weeping and wringing its hands but not to any material extent arresting its downward progress. Agriculture has been often described as the Cinderella of industry. It is the Cinderella of industry. During the last two years at any rate it has managed "to go to the ball," in a beautiful coach driven by no less a person than the Prime Minister himself. It seems to me now that, instead of going to the ball, it is likely in the early future to go to the wall, unless some settled policy for agriculture is propounded by the Government.

LORD PARMOOR

My Lords, may I put one or two questions to the noble Lord the President of the Board of Agriculture before he replies? In reference to what was said by Lord Bledisloe, I think the unsettlement and uncertainty in the agricultural outlook is one of the most difficult factors which farmers have to deal with at the present time. I hope the noble Lord when he comes to reply will, apart from the question of a Royal Commission or of what a Royal Commission may report, indicate to us what in his view is the best policy for landowners and farmers to adopt in accordance with the existing outlook.

May I give an illustration from my own county? The noble Lord belongs to what he calls a grass district, and other noble Lords belong to what may be called arable districts. Farmers about me hold mixed farms, partly arable and partly grass. If you are to have economical production it is of the first importance that the balance between arable, and grass laud should be properly adjusted. After the bad times of 1879 and 1880 the landowners in my district did provide a sufficient amount of grass land in order to obtain a proper balance for economic production. The difficulty of ploughing up grass land was not so much the actual ploughing in itself. It upset the whole economical arrangement which was necessary in order to get the best production from the farms in question. I can give an illustration of a farm which was self-sustaining as regards the production of cattle, and with a sufficient amount of arable land for production. About 120 acres of that farm were ordered to be ploughed up. I do not complain of what was done during war times. But the result was exactly similar to that stated by Lord Ribblesdale—there was practically nothing produced of the slightest value. So far as anything was produced, it was merely suitable for cattle and poultry food and for nothing else.

What I want to ask on the question of policy is this. Does the noble Lord desire that this land should be retained as ploughed land quite irrespective of the economic loss, or would be advise farmers that the time has now come when they might restore this land to its former condition? Let me give an illustration of what that means in my own county. Arable land there is worth only about 10s. per acre. It is that poor and second-rate sort which could not really produce profitable crops under the old conditions. Grass land we can let at from £2 to £2 10s. per acre. It is quite obvious that the first result of ploughing up grass land was to many people a loss of several thousands of pounds. But apart from that, does he desire that the area of ploughed land should be continued under those conditions; or, if landowners and others are prepared to face the expenditure of putting their farms back under the best system of economic production, can they be assured that after their expenditure some further Order may not be made as regards ploughing up their grass land? It is very important that we should know that, because, as has already been stated by two noble Lords, we might just squeeze out enough, some of us, to try and put back our farms into their former economic condition of production if we were assured that we should then be let alone, as I think we ought to be.

The second point that I want to ask the noble Lord a bout was dealt with by my noble friend Lord Bledisloe. I am afraid that I differ from him entirely in the suggestion that a Royal Commission on Agriculture should be manned by Judges, which I understand was his suggestion. I do not think that is a purpose for which Judges ought to be used, and I do not think you would have your Royal Commission best manned if you had on it persons skilled in the law but many of them knowing nothing at all about the agri- cultural industry. I do not know how it it proposed that the Royal Commission should be manned, but taking an opposite view from that expressed by the noble Lord who spoke last, I hope that a large proportion of the members will be people of actual experience in farming and of the actual questions which arise in connection with the farming industry. I believe that if the representation of the Royal Commission is to carry weight it can only do so under that condition. If it is to be merely a Royal Commission the Report of which is to be pigeon-holed, it will do no harm, but also it will do no good.

Another point upon which I hope that the noble Lord in his reply will be very explicit is this. Are we to have an era of artificial prices and artificial wages in the future or not? My experience amongst agricultural labourers shows that artificial prices and artificial wages, so far as they are concerned, leave them very much in the same condition in which they were before. If you increase wages two-fold and increase prices two-fold you practically come to the same condition so far as the agricultural labourer is concerned. But what about the future? Is it really probable in a country like this that we shall be able to maintain these artificial prices in future? If the noble Lord can give any assurance on that point it may meet the difficulties as regards wages at the present time. I do not in the least desire that wages should be in any way reduced. I am only speaking as to what has taken place in my own district. I know, and I am certain none of your Lordships will come to any other conclusion, that if you sought to impose the obligation of the present rate of wages and at the same time what might be a natural price of products owing to foreign competition, the agricultural industry must inevitable come to grief in this country. You would then have artificial wages on one side and natural prices upon the other, and if you must have your wages based on natural prices—I do not say how they are to be ascertained; it is a very difficult question—then you must have some guarantee not only for one year or two years—because in my country the rotation is a five year rotation—but you must have a guarantee for an adequate time that those prices shall be maintained.

I do not want to go into the policy of artificial prices, but I have a belief myself that natural prices and natural wages would be the more proper solution. That, however, is a question which I do not intend to go into at the present moment. What I say is that if you are to have wages at this artificial height you ought to have a guarantee over a period of years that the price of produce shall be such that those wages can be paid without ruining the industry. Let me give an illustration upon that point. As regards the Corn Production Act, to which reference was made, when the Act was before your Lordships' House I endeavoured to point out that even at the pre-war rate of wages the guaranteed prices were quite useless, because they were too low. Wheat after a certain time I think was to be 45s. I entirely agree with what my noble friend said that in order to encourage production, if it is to be encouraged under the conditions which have been started from the Board of Agriculture, you must have at least a minimum price of 65s., and it may be pointed out that with all labour saving appliances—I am talking of places where tractors are used to a very large extent indeed—to suggest an artificial price which is so low that it is of no value whatever against the artificial high wages is not only a mistake but is a very misleading factor indeed. It is uncertainty and unrest on points of that kind that create so much difficulty.

May I say a word, arising out of my practical experience, on the question of wages? I think that comparatively high wages can be paid if you do not interfere too much with the methods and hours of employment in agriculture. Agriculture in this respect is entirely distinct from the ordinary factory business. You may have months together—it has been so almost since the first of January this year—when as farmers have said to me, they would rather that their men stopped in bed than came on the land, because there was really nothing to be done of true producing value. But when you come to harvest and hay-time every hour is of enormous importance. Therefore I contend that this is an industry in which great latitude in regard to the fixing of hours is almost a necessity. The farmers about me at any rate say, "We should not mind the higher wages; we would do our best with the higher wages if we only had greater freedom in our methods of employment, and were not tied down to the factory system as regards hours, because they are totally unsuitable for au industry like agriculture."

It has been a custom, at any rate in my country, to train up boys in agriculture until they become men interested in the industry. That is what we want; but under the regulation of wages at the moment that is almost impossible. Lately I have had six or seven boys who have reached the age of eighteen. At the age of eighteen they are now entitled to a man's wages. What has been the result? It has been impossible to keep them on at a man's wages, because at the age of eighteen they are not worth the wages that you can afford to pay to a skilled man whom you could trust in the management of cattle. The mothers of these boys have come to me and said, "Cannot our boys stop on; their brothers always did." I said "Oh no, it is impossible. You cannot pay these high wages to boys of that age." They then suggest, "No one would know if you paid less. Then you could let them stop on, because we want them to learn to be skilled in agriculture." One has to point out that that is impossible. The moral is that if you want to encourage skilled agricultural labour you must not put on a maximum wage until the youth has arrived at a time, and has had an experience, which makes his labour approximate in value to the wages he has to be paid. If you have a period between the two I do not think that anything could be worse for the prospect of agricultural labour, because you would drive the growing boy away just at a time when he ought to be going on and becoming a skilled labourer. That is an important factor in my own district.

There is one other point to which I would ask the noble Lord's attention. The noble Duke referred to Schedule D. What is the result of Schedule D? The accounts from my farm—I am bound to give it as an illustration—have always been kept by an accountant on what I may call accountant's methods. The time came when these accounts, which were, I believe, properly kept, had to be submitted to the officers of the Inland Revenue for purposes of Schedule D. For the last year, ever since that has been done, every official on my farm has been pestered with questions which have very little relevance to true matters of accounts but which are official questions that the Inland Revenue officers seem determined to ascertain, or to exploit. Surely that is wrong. Surely, if you are to have the advantage of Schedule D, and particularly if a farmer is to have the advantage of it (because it is intended for the advantage of the farmer) the Inland Revenue officers ought not to impose conditions which put the advantage of Schedule D practically out of the reach of an ordinary farmer at all.

That is, of course, a question of detail, but the noble Lord will know, as well as all those who have been engaged in judicial work and other work of that kind know, that the income-tax requirements may be made unduly expensive and unduly troublesome, and, in the case of farmers at any rate, you ought to see that, if the accounts are properly kept and give adequate information, meticulous information ought not to be asked for, because in that case you purport to give an advantage with one hand which you take away with the other. After all, I think far the most important point is that we should know the views of the noble Lord as regards the future of agriculture—what we ought to do, and what is best to be done; and, if he can give us information, that would go a long way to solve our difficulty and a long way to remove the unrest which undoubtedly exists among farmers at the present time.

THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE

My Lords, I should like to say one word on a sentence which fell from my noble friend on the Cross Benches (Lord Parmoor). The House knows that my noble friend is a farmer on a very large scale. He has often told us in the House that he farms 1,500 acres of land, and we are very proud of him in the County of Bucks, and look upon him as a very fine specimen of an up-to-date, Saturday-to-Monday, forensic Cincinnatus. And we all remember the Homeric contest he had in this House with the noble Lord the President of the Board of Agriculture with regard to ploughing up a piece of land which he described as "very fine pasture." We remember the wriggling and the attempts that he made to get out of doing what was supposed to be his public duty—

LORD PARMOOR

I do not think that was so.

THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE

But he obeyed orders and ploughed up his field. He told us, I remember, that he did not expect to get more result out of his field than the amount of corn that he put into it. But I am glad to say that that was not the case. I had the opportunity of having the noble Lord's field photo graphed just before rite harvest, and the photograph showed a very fine crop of oats; we put a man into the crop, a fair sized man, and the crop reached up to his shoulders. I take the liberty of publicly congratulating my noble friend—

LORD PARMOOR

I am very interested in. this. Would the noble Marquess say where this beautiful crop was that was photographed? It is the first -f have heard of it.

THE MARQUESS OF LINCOLNSHIRE

I do not know the number of the field on the Ordnance map, but I have, the number of the field and can give it to the noble Lord any time he wishes. Also, I shall be very proud to send him a copy of the photograph with the bumper crop. I respectfully congratulate him on the success of his farming.

LORD HINDLIP

My Lords, if I might be allowed to make a few remarks, possibly the President of the Board of Agriculture may not be sorry to find that there is at least one farmer in this country who is not in a state of wailing and weeping, and who does not see the future as black as most people are attempting to paint it. I suppose I am probably thoroughly unorthodox. But the only really black shadow which I see in front of us to-day is the shadow of Government control—the deadening hand—and once we can get away front that to as great an extent as possible I for my part do not see why we should not go ahead and do very well. I am certain, as far as I am concerned, that when free from control—and I do not so much mind control from London as I do control locally—one can improve one's ground, one can increase one's produce and sell a good article at a reasonable price, and one can produce, if one likes to take the trouble to spend the money, a luxury for which one can get a high price.

Everybody is crying out to-day in one way or another for high prices. I look upon high prices with the greatest possible distrust. They are bad for everybody. There is no section of the community except the middleman, for whom I have no regard, who is getting any benefit out of it at all. It only increases the friction and bad feeling between town and country, and in dealing with prices for agricultural produce we have to remember that we are an industrial country, and that the population to the extent of something like 70 per cent. live in the towns. I do not believe that they will stand high subsidies in any form, or protection for agricultural produce.

We must remember that we are living in an island, and that the sea is a very great protection to many articles that we produce. Milk can only come brought in a can, potatoes are protected more or less by the amount of water they contain. And meat to some extent is protected by natural means, and can be protected by natural means a very great deal more. The value of a beast on the hoof and the value of a dead beast with its by-products are two very different things, and when once the farmer begins to find out what an animal really is worth I think he will be very much more careful in the way in which he deals with his cattle.

The noble Lord, Lord Bledisloe, I think tittered one or two rather dangerous words. He doubted whether a man ought to be allowed to extend his farming. Well, a man can only improve his farm to a certain extent. During the process of doing it he has to extend, he has to get more land in order to house his young stock in the winter, or to enable it to run about in the spring, or for many other things, and really to improve his holding he must increase it. After all, we know the money that is made on the produce grown by the small cultivators outside Paris and in Belgium and Denmark, but we cannot exactly take that as a precedent for what we are to do here. Then the noble Lord also complains—most people are complaining—that the Government have no plan. If the Government had a plan they would probably try and make us follow it; and we have had some experience in the last three or four years of Government plans. We have heard of pigs and many other things. I have not a very large experience in business, but I should be very glad to know of anyone in business who really wants to follow a Government plan.

Farmers have the ball at their feet to a very much larger extent than they think they have. If they will not combine, if they will not co-operate, if they will not do things for themselves that they are capable of doing if they will only take the trouble to do them, I look upon those men as unprogressive; and it they go to the wall I think they have only themselves to blame. At the present moment every one is asking for too much. As I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Parmoor, said, there is an artificial atmosphere. The labourer asks for 50s. a week and the farmer asks for 80s. for his wheat. Both of those are impossible at the present time; but the more the farmer yells for high prices the more the labourer will shout for higher wages. Take the agricultural produce of the country. I am afraid I did not hear the commencement of the remarks of the noble Duke, but I gather he talked to some extent upon wheat. Wheat has always been able to be grown in this country in the wheat-growing districts—namely, in the eastern parts of the island where you have large expanses of land and where you can utilise cheap methods of cultivation, steam tackle, and so on; and it always has been successfully grown in large quantities since the days of the very bad depression. The same applies to potatoes. I see no reason why the form of cultivation which has gone on in those parts of the island should not continue as well after the war as it did before the war. Without any protection or subsidies or fixed prices there are a great many things which can be made. Works are making farina, which is largely made out of potatoes; and other works could be started in England which would provide an outlet for that class of produce without putting anything on the town taxpayer that he will resent.

The same applies to milk. The farmers all over the country to-day are complaining about and striking over the price of milk. I am a milk producer. I do not think I am going to make much out of the wholesale price of milk, but I am perfectly certain that, if I went into the retail trade and sold my milk, over and above what I made on the wholesale price I could make in the year between £6 and £8 per gallon of milk. I believe the price to the consumer is high enough to satisfy the farmer provided the farmer will carry on his work in a businesslike way and with modern methods. I am of opinion that, provided the farmer will produce his milk properly and of good quality and take the proper precautions to sell it at the best advantage to himself, there is no reason for the price of milk to be put up. But if the farmer will insist upon going entirely on his own and not taking advantage of modern methods he is going to have a very difficult time. The consumer is not going to pay more than a certain amount of money for home-grown products. He is not going to pay more than a certain amount of money for his milk. And I am certain that if the farmer will take advantage of what is offered to him he can supply his milk, and many other products, to the consumer at a price which the consumer will pay and which will leave a. reasonable profit to the farmer out of which he can pay wages sufficient to get men. There is only one shadow in connection with the milk trade, and that is Government control. No one knows whether the Government will take over the milk supply of the country, or, if they do take it over, how they are going to manage it; and until that shadow is dissipated I think there will be a certain amount of dissatisfaction and unrest among the milk-producing community.

The noble Duke spoke about binder-twine, petrol, and paraffin. He wanted to know whether the farmers could get those articles at reasonable rates. As long as the farmer will not do very much to help himself I do not think he will get anything at a reasonable rate. The same remarks apply to binder-twine, petrol, and paraffin, as those I have made in regard to selling. I do not see why you should not get binder-twine through the farmers' societies and make it up for the use of the farmers. All these things could be done, and the cost of what the farmer requires could be materially reduced. The same applies to getting manure from the towns. You hardly ever see a barge now on the canals, and the canals could be used to a very much greater extent. There are a number of light railways in the hands of the Ministry of Supply which could be used to run up to certain points. I tried to get some from the Ministry of Supply, but I have about as much chance of getting it from them as I have of making it myself out of nothing. The difficulty in these matters is getting the things. I am anxious to hear what the noble Lord has to tell us this afternoon.

I want to ask the noble Lord whether he can tell us two things, about which I spoke to him the other day—namely, Can we be told what stocks of cheese and meat will be held by the Ministry of Food when the control comes off? If the Ministry of Food are going on hoarding up cheese and meat right to the last moment, we have the suspicion that they are going to dump this on the market to our dis advantage at some time or another; and I think it would be only fair both to the milk and to the cattle people if they could have some idea of the stocks of these commodities which will be held by the Food Controller at the end of September.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD ERNLE)

My Lords, I feel that the amount of material before me which. I ought to answer is such as would tax the debating skill and experience of a man who is far more skilled and experienced than I have been able to become in my very brief Parliamentary career; but sifting all the various questions that have been asked me, and trying to answer those which seem to me essential, I think the great point which the Horse wants to know is what is the Government's policy towards the land of this country. The Government for the last two and a half years has adopted the policy of encouraging, both by pecuniary and material assistance, the agricultural industry to the utmost of its power, subject to the paramount necessity of bringing the war to a successful issue. There have been, as the noble Lord who has just sat clown has said, an immense number of controls. Agricultural labour was controlled; wool, straw, hay, fertilisers, feeding-stuffs, and all the prices of human food were controlled; there were many other controls and in all those cases the Board of Agriculture had only the right to be consulted—the final decision rested with the authoritative executive Department.

Those conditions necessarily exposed the Board of Agriculture to a great deal of criticism and some misunderstanding, and I think they may possibly have undermined the influence of the Board in the country. On the whole the Board has never complained and never explained, but it has gone on, I think, doing its best in those very difficult circumstances. Three points seem to me to stand out. One is this—that agriculture has obtained a better range of prices from the Minister of Food, because he was mainly the representative of the consumers, than could possibly have been obtained by the President of the Board of Agriculture, as the representative of the producer. The public supported the one but would not have supported the other. The next point which stands out is this—that in every detail (and there have been numerous controversies) the farmer ap- peared to have been defeated in the first instance, but in the long run he got a reasonable compromise. The third point is that the policy has succeeded. It has succeeded to a remarkable extent. You cannot increase the nation's food without treading or trampling on the corns of many people. I am afraid that we have trampled on the corns of ninny of your Lordships in this House. One or two signs of the pain have made themselves manifest this afternoon. But we alone among all the belligerent nations of the world have been able to increase our output of human food, to increase our dairy herd, and to maintain at its pre-war level our stock of beef cattle. We have done that although we lost a third of the skilled permanent men in the employment of agriculture, and although we have had two of the most adverse seasons which we have had for many years past—seasons which in ordinary times would have sopped something like disaster.

I think that that part of the Government's policy has at least been successful, and the policy remains the same to-day as it was then. There are two ways of treating' agriculture. One is to say that agriculture is a private enterprise which must sink or swim like every other private business. The other is to say that agriculture is a great national industry which, because it touches the national life on so many sides, some of them social, does require special support under special conditions. That is the policy which His Majesty's Government since the end of 1916 has adopted towards the agricultural industry, and it is the policy which as far as I know it means to continue. That is the meaning of the phrases which have been used when the Government has emphatically pledged itself to stand by the industry and sec it through the hard times that probably stand before it.

So far as I personally am concerned, I am entirely opposed to a. system of high artificial prices. I think that they give an element of unreality to the whole of the position throughout every branch of society, that we have got to get back to market prices, and that anything short of that means that we have fictitious wages based on fictitious prices. But I believe that the real solution of the difficulty lies in carrying out the Corn Production Act of 1917. I am surprised to find that Lord Bledisloe has given up his support and adherence to that Act. It was the principle recommended by a Committee over which the noble Earl opposite presided, which reported in January, 1917, before the Corn Production Act was fully drafted, and the principles that that Commission recommended—the noble Lord and I were members—were these: that a minimum wage should be fixed, that a guaranteed price for wheat and oats should be paid, and that as a condition of that guarantee increased production should be insisted upon; and I would remind the noble Lord that he was himself a member of the Government that introduced that Bill and of the Government by which it was passed—that he was also summoned to at least two meetings of the Cabinet when that Bill was under discussion. I can imagine the noble Lord saying, "Experience has proved that I was wrong." That is a reasonable thing to say, but that was not quite the line which he took in his speech, and I feel bound to point that out. I myself realise that the Corn Production Act, in certain respects requires to be amended. Of course, the scale of guaranteed prices is now totally inadequate to wages; and what has been pointed out, I think, by one of the speakers this afternoon is a point which is clearly established—that there must be an adjustment of the relations between wages that are fixed and prices that are guaranteed. I think that is an amendment which must be carried out, and I also think that some provision ought to be made for the periodic revision of that Act.

There is a feature in the agricultural situation which has not been touched upon and it is what I may call the big national question affecting agriculture as a national industry and not as a private enterprise. If we look back we shall find that in 1841 agriculture was feeding 24,500,000 people out of the total population of 26,000,000. In 1914 it was feeding 17,500,000 out of a total population of 46,000.000. I know the standard of living had risen, but the broad fact remains that in 1841 the British housewife filled her larder and her store for every meal of every day in the week except the Sunday supper, with home grown food, hut in 1914 she depended upon the foreign importer for every meal of every day in the week except from Friday evening to Monday morning. Agriculturally, we had become a nation of week-end suppliers. What is the effect of that position? I am not going to open the hitter question of fiscal controversy, but we all know what the result of that was. It was this—that a change was made in the nation's policy towards food which, from 1875 to 1914, laid down 4,400,000 acres to grass.

This meant, of course, that farmers, with great skill and at great cost, adapted themselves to that changed policy and, as men of business, grew the produce that paid them best; but it meant an enormous decrease in food production. The quantity of food that can be grown from 100 acres of grass, whether it is put into meat or milk, is not sufficient for nearly one-third of the number of people who can be fed from 100 acres of arable land, whether it is in corn or potatoes. Consumers in the towns have been complaining for years with increasing vehemence that the land of this country is not growing the amount of food that it can grow and ought to grow, and is not giving the amount of employment that it can give and ought to give. They therefore say that the land is not being put to its best use for the national welfare. The conclusions that they draw from that complaint are highly dangerous—highly dangerous to the farming industry and highly dangerous to the existence of property in land—and all the more dangerous because the complaint on which they are based is a fact.

The land is not producing what it ought to produce and what it might produce. What these consumers do not realise is that the condition of farming to-day is what they themselves have chosen to make it, and that they alone can supply the remedy. The consumers of this country—and it is probably a bold request—are asked on national grounds to adopt a new policy, and on national grounds (national safety, national health, national employment, national finance) to support the Government in their policy of maintaining arable farming in this country and so developing the latent resources of the soil and giving a larger scale of employment. That policy is not going to give farmers easier lives or larger net profits. Quite the contrary. But, in proportion as it succeeds, it will reduce the amount of our dependence upon the foreigner for food; it will increase the output of food from this country; it will maintain upon the land a larger rural population; it will relieve the possible congestion of the labour market.

If the consumers are not prepared to support the Government in their proposal then, as it seems to me, there are two alternatives, and they are these. One is to lay the land down to grass and to lay it down in large additional quantities; but if you do that these consequences follow. You reduce employment; you reduce your output of food; you increase your dependence upon the foreigner, and—for things are very uncertain still—a possible effect would be that in 1920 there might he a shortage in our command of cereal food. Another result, as it seems to me, will necessarily follow. Every step that is taken towards that laying down of grass brings nearer to us the other alternative which lies before us, and that alternative is in my opinion the far more costly and the wholly impracticable scheme of nationalising the farming industry. We have that choice before us. It may be that some of us may hesitate to take the long view. Those who take the short view, I think, must admit the strength of this argument. At the present moment everything is uncertain. Prices are uncertain; wages are uncertain; the recovery and expansion of our trade, to which we look to absorb unemployment, are uncertain; and although for the 1919 harvest our wheat supplies seem to be absolutely secure, after that date our supplies are uncertain. In all these uncertainties it is to the farmer's interest, and it is, if I may say so, his correct game, to play for safety in grass. I think we should all admit that; but surely in the nation's interest it is necessary to maintain, for a time at all events, the maximum capacity of the land to give employment and grow food—that is to say, to maintain our arable farming in this country.

It is, of course, in the main a question of prices; but it is not so altogether. There is something else to be considered. Farming is riot worth the national support unless it is good. If national support is given, the nation has the right to say that the farming shall be of the best. We have in this country farmers of skill, energy, and enterprise, who have no superiors in the whole world, but it has been a revelation to many of the men who have sat on our agricultural committees to know how much of the farming of this country is moderate, indifferent, and even positively bad. Therefore the Government intend by means of the Executive Committees to press forward with energy the attempt to bring the farming of this country up to the hest standard of the district in which it is being carried on. That is another part of our policy.

I do not know whether your Lordships would wish me to deal with the other side of our policy—I mean the educational and scientific side. I think farmers will want all the help they can get. We propose to supply for the benefit of all agriculturists and all horticulturists a readier means to the best technical instruction, a readier access to all the resources of science, greater facilities for research into all the problems of agricultural life, and a greater command of the best technical expert advice. We intend to do that in a number of directions. I notice that Lord Selborne has placed on the Paper a Question to me for this afternoon,^*and in what I am going to say now I will give him the answer to his Question. We intend to support additional colleges and agricultural institutes and to establish rural institutes with an education of quite a new class. I have been myself the chairman of a secondary education committee, and concerned for many years in rural education. What has really killed rural education of a higher kind has been this, If you take a boy away and put him in a college or institute for a year he does not go back to the land—he goes elsewhere. What we propose to do is to give winter courses of three months in the dead winter months, so that in three years' time the boy will have completed a continuous course. He will be all the time actively employed on the land. I believe that this will enormously improve our labour; and I am sure of this, that every scrap of knowledge of the why and wherefore of agriculture you can teach these boys will add to their interest in their work and enhance the dignity of their labour in their minds. This increased expenditure will not fall upon the rates to any large extent. It will be considered as part of the national education, and will be in the main defrayed by the State.

*The Question on the Paper in the name of the Earl of SELBORNE was as follows: To ask the President of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries whether His Majesty has been advised to issue an order in Council under section 4 of the Board of Agriculture Act to transfer to the Board of Agriculture from the Board of Education the responsibility for all agricultural education except that provided in elementary and secondary schools as recommended in paragraph 127 of the Report of the Agricultural Policy Sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Committee.

The noble Earl has asked me whether we have brought in an Order in Council to legalise the understanding which at present exists between the Board of Education and the Board of Agriculture as to the limits of agricultural education. My answer to him is that we have not. We have had no difficulties whatever with the Board of Education. The coucordat between us was arrived at in perfectly clear terms. It has been running now for something like nine years, and if we were to bring in an Order in Council putting down in so many words the surrender by the Board of Education of what it considers to be its privilege in the counties I think we should have great difficulty in carrying such an Order through. The noble Earl will see in the Land Settlement Bill that there is a provision which carries our relations with the Board of Education rather closer than what they were before.

We propose also to establish demonstration farms. The noble Duke in his speech laid stress upon the fact that we had to bring our scientific expert knowledge in London down to the War Executive Committees, and down to the man whose farm these Executive Committees more or less control. We intend to do it by demonstration farms, by an increased staff of technical advisers; and we hope that such matters as the waste of farm-yard manure, or the application of the wrong manure to a particular soil, will become a thing of the past—that education will make it impossible. We have numerous other plans in view. We have the reclamation of certain selected areas of land which we believe can be brought into cultivation, and among them I can assure the noble Lord we have our eye on considerable portions of Yorkshire where we hope to create really valuable pasturage out of land which is at the present worthless. We have in our minds schemes of drainage, surface drainage both large and small, which will be of the utmost value. I should very much like to have undertaken the task which Lord Bledisloe suggested to me of drainage in the ordinary sense of land, but there is one practical reason why that is at the present moment absolutely impossible. You cannot get the drain pipes. It may not sound so conclusive as it is, but with the tremendous demand upon brickworks for bricks at the present moment it is an absolute prohibition on our attempting any big scheme of drainage. Wherever it is possible to adodt the more simple and ancient means of drainage we have recommended them to the farmer. Besides that, we have in view the establishment of certain new experimental crops which we believe may prove to be invaluable to this country. Hemp, flax, sugar-beet, and the farina factories which have been set up for potatoes have, I think, already been mentioned in the course of the debate. In addition we intend to try and set up—and this is a point that was mentioned by the noble Duke—a better system of marketing intelligence. That is a thing that is much wanted. Au attempt is also being made to open up a new market organisation.

Another point that I might mention is that of transport facilities. I quite agree with the noble Lord—I am sorry to say that I have forgotten who it was—who said that what the farmer wanted was not a light railway but a motor service. We had put before the Treasury—when the Minister of Ways and Communications was established he took over this particular plan—experimental schemes for trying in selected districts, where if it will pay at all it must pay, a motor scheme on a considerable scale, and also a trench railway scheme which is different from the light railway scheme and far less expensive, and I believe will be one that will be found to be extremely valuable. Further, there is the matter on which the noble Lord, Lord Hindlip, commented. We mean to push forward strongly the promotion of co-operation in all directions. I feel absolutely sure that if a number of those excellent farmers who are striking against the milk prices to-day were to combine and send their milk into market, not in five carts with five horses and five drivers, but with one cart, they probably would make a very handsome thing out of the milk price, which I do not desire to discuss but which is at the rate of 2½d more than last year. Those are the things that we have in view.

As a means to these ends we intend to reorganise the Board of Agriculture both inside and out. Inside we are adding a considerable number of branches. We are adding, for instance, a technical branch which will deal with education and instruction and various forms of research. We are adding also a much wanted commercial section, and a horticultural section, and certain other sections. Outside, the principle change is to link up the Board of Agriculture with all the local organisations. The County Council will be asked to form an Agricultural Committee which, through its sub-committees, will administer all the powers of the local authorities with regard to agriculture. Out of that County Committee will be drawn the bulk of the members of a National Agricultural Council which will be set up by legislation and will meet at certain intervals, and out of that National Agricultural Council will be considerably drawn the members of an Advisory Committee to the Board of Agriculture which also will have stated meetings and will advise the Board on all points of agricultural importance.

Those, my Lords, are the main outlines of the policy of the Government towards the agricultural industry. The Government recognises the extreme danger of the fact that the land of this country is producing so little and employing so few, and we recognise also the strength of the movement which lies behind that complaint, and we have tried to meet it by the Corn Production Act, which on the one hand provides the corn-growing farmer with a guarantee, and on the other gives the Government power to enforce the best kind of production. It will be a. difficult and a very irksome path to follow—of that I have no doubt—but I also, so far as I have any right to speak on that subject, am convinced that it is the only path to follow to safety and to prosperity generally for the agricultural community.

We promised when the Corn Production Act. was brought in on February 23, 1917, that the Act should be revised in 1920 with a view to its prolongation, amendment, and so on, but the hands of the Government have been in a certain sense forced. A demand was put at one of the labourers' conferences for a Commission to inquire into the relation between prices and wages. The moment that demand was raised by the workers it put the Government—it would put any Government—into a very dangerous position. We could not from that moment announce our intentions as to prices under the Corn Production Act, because with the demand for an inquiry before us it was open at once to say, "Why you are fixing these prices before you know what the demands are." From another point of view it is dangerous. Supposing that the workers. Land a conference and the farmers will not have it. The answer is, "You are afraid of it." I do not think that farmers need be afraid of it, but the Commission is appointed now to do what would have been done, as I think, better a year hence when we had got a little further away from the present uncertainties and when we knew somewhat where we stood. But we shall have to do it now, and I hope that there will be in the revision of the Act provision made for the establishment of a relation between the guaranteed prices and the wages that are offered. I should like to add on that point that the principle of the Corn Production Act—and I say it because I think the noble Lord, Lord Parmoor, still misunderstands the principle of the Corn Production Act—is not to fix selling prices for produce, it is not fixing profits to farmers: the whole object of it is to guarantee a man against reasonable, substantial loss—that is the point. And therefore it does not appear to me so difficult to do that as it would be to fix prices generally.

If I might pass away from that to some of the points which the noble Duke has made, it would enable me from time to time to illustrate some of the things that I have just now said. I have alluded to his point about the waste of manure. There are other economies that we might effect. One is in the use of seed of highly prolific and disease-resisting qualities—I rather think the noble Duke mentioned it. There could be no greater saving than that. The prospect in that direction is very bright. We are using our best efforts to encourage the work of Professor Biffen and his colleagues at the Cambridge Institute, and we have also set up a commercial side to it on the lines of the Svaloff Institute in Sweden, which brings the seed rapidly into the market on a commercial scale.

Another source of waste is the purchase of seeds which are impure and wanting in germinating qualities. It is almost incredible that in England up to two years ago we had no seed-testing stations, and that, though this country has one of the biggest export trades in seed of any country, its seed was sold on the Continent with a certificate from Zürich. We have now got a seed-testing station, and it is so extensively used that it is already practically self-supporting, and the Order by which during the war we were able to enforce it has been so well accepted by the seed trade that I trust we shall be able to make it a permanent thing.

Another source of waste is the purchase of fertilisers which are not what they profess to be, and I might add, perhaps, in deference to what Lord Bledisloe said—of compound cakes that are riot what they profess to be. During toe last two years we have been able to get an Order that every compound fertiliser has to state the unit values of the ingredients which it professes to contain. That has been of the utmost value, and I very much hope that we shall be able to make that also permanent. We have set up, and connected it with the University of Leeds, an Institute dealing with agricultural machinery, and among other things with tractor machinery and I hope that that in course of time will mere the point of the noble Duke.

The noble Duke has rightly laid stress upon fertilisers. I can tell, I think for certain, that the supply of sulphate of ammonia and of basic slag will be plentiful. During the war—the last two years, at all events, of the war—the State has helped the farmer with his fertilisers, and it has cost the State something like £1,600,000 in the last year. That is, perhaps, one of those things which agriculturists have never given the Government credit for, any more than they have for the Government's accepting a liability on behalf of the taxpayer far in excess of what the Corn Production Act said—a liability which may cost the taxpayer something like £25,000,000 of money. Those things are forgotten very rapidly by the agriculturists to whom they were given. But, so far as fertilisers are concerned, we have subsidised fertilisers. We can no longer subsidise them; and, although it might very well be a question whether the prices should in some form or other he controlled, I cannot promise that any steps of that kind will be taken. We hope that the price of sulphate of ammonia may be kept down by the nitrates which compete with it scientifically as nitrogenous manures—that they will come in considerable quantities, because they are no longer required for explosives. But the price at which they come in must depend on freight.

Potash we shall obtain in considerable quantities from the Stassfurt deposits in Germany, and it will be distributed so far as possible by the Board of Agriculture. Superphosphate will, I am afraid, he scarce. There are labour troubles in the Tunisian quarries, and that probably will be scarce. We have made our best efforts to increase the supply of lime. Coal and labour are the two difficulties. We have provided a cheaper substitute in ground limestone; we have experimented with machines which grind the limestone, and I hope we shall have a cheap output. In fact, I think, in many ways the Board has been trying to look in every direction to cheapen the cost of production as far as it can.

As to the feeding-stuffs situation, I fear that they will be scarce. I entirely agree with what the noble Duke has said that the policy at the present moment is to use fertilisers and grow all the homegrown feeding-stuffs that you possibly can. Palm kernel oil will probably be plentiful, but linseed will be scarce and probably dear, and in that case I entirely agree with the noble Duke that the best substitute is beans and, of course, leguminous crops generally. I hope the noble Duke will forgive me if I do not pass in review all his many other points. His rotation of crops seemed to me admirable for a war rotation; it is, in fact, practically that which was employed in Germany. The peace rotation also seemed to me admirable, and it provided for a larger percentage of corn crop than is the pre-war average in this country.

When the noble Duke asks me to tell him what the various costs will be a year or two years hence, I am afraid that he is asking us to calculate the incalculable and define the indefinable. I do not think that it is possible to prepare such careful figures as will give us any line as to the produce of future years, either in this country or in foreign countries. Look, for instance, at foreign countries. Who can tell when Russia or when Hungary is going to be producing corn again on the old scale? Who can tell when Germany, which is said to be something like 50 per cent., below her pre-war level, will recover her output of food? Who can say what will be the effect upon America of the great drop in corn prices which is anticipated in 1919? It is true, as the noble Duke said, that the Royal Institution at Rome collects most useful statistic and publishes them in a useful compendious form. But it is not quite, if I may say so with respect, in the direction which the noble Duke indicated. The information which they collect is of production and not of prices; and they do not deal in any way with forecasts. One has only to read any of the criticisms of their publications to see that men of the same wide experience from the same facts form perfectly divergent conclusions. I think, therefore, that demonstrates the impossibility of prophesying about the future in those kinds of ways.

Now, if the Government is able to obtain a return of confidence in the agricultural industry, if the agricultural industry will take the Government's support during the past two years, the Government's acceptance of a huge liability for the harvest of 1919, as an earnest and a pledge of their intentions, then I hope very much that the agricultural industry will resume all its former courage and tenacity of purpose, and that it will exercise the right of private judgment awl face the financial risks which are inseparable front the maintenance of the industry as a private enterprise. If they are not prepared to take private risks—and, after all, that is the meaning of a minimum price, and underlay, perhaps, the noble Duke's demand for accurate figures—if they are not prepared to take the risks of old times, then again I say that they are coining a step nearer to the nationalisation of the industry.

In concluding what I fear has been an intolerably long speech nay I say a word on the labour question which dominates the whole horizon? If labour makes such demands upon the farmers that to create any guarantee at all is wholly out of the question, then I should admit that the Government proposals must prove a failure. I myself trust that saner counsels will prevail. Up to the prospective rise made in wages the labourer was no better off than he was before the war. At an average wage of 33s., the Wages Board proved to the satisfaction of both farmer and labourer that it left a margin, to a man with a standard family, of 7d., a week. We have to remember that we are not likely in these days, when labour in every industry has new visions and new dreams before it, to get agricultural labourers to work on the land for a margin of 7d. a week. Nor do I personally think that we ought to ask them to do it.

Several NOBLE LORDS

Hear, hear.

LORD ERNLE

I think it would be short-sighted and suicidal of us to do so. To my mind it may be a man's lot to be an agricultural labourer, but he is also a man and "a citizen of no mean city"; and unless you find the agricultural labourers the means and opportunity of leisure, and the means and opportunity of making a wise and patriotic use of that leisure, I believe we are heading in this democratic country straight to destruction.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE

My Lords, the noble Lord began his speech by stating with perfect good humour that in the past his Department had been subject to considerable criticism both in your Lordships' House and elsewhere, and he made a defence of its past action during the war which I think appealed greatly to the House at large. It certainly seemed to me that, although we were not always able to understand the precise relations which existed between his Department and that of Food Control, the noble Lord was able to explain to us that it was the Food Control Department which, in the particular circumstances of the war, necessarily had the last word. The noble Lord has given us a most interesting account, in answer to the noble Duke on the cross-benches, of the general efforts which are being made and are going to be made to encourage production in the country. I am certain that whatever may have been the criticisms levelled at his Department Ionic have been levelled at the noble Lord himself—

Several NOBLE LORDS

Hear, hear.

THE MARQUESS OF CREWE

Because every one both here and elsewhere knows his full grasp of the whole subject of agriculture and his devotion to the interests of the whole agricultural community. I am not going to attempt to follow the various prospects—many of them most alluring—which the noble Lord held out to us on this matter of securing a greater output. I listened with great pleasure to what the noble Lord said of the wide encouragement to be given to agricultural education, because I have always felt that upon a reasonable system of agricultural education at its different levels depended more than anything else the future of the agriculture of the country. In particular I heard with gratification of the proposal to institute agricultural courses to be combined with the actual practice of the industry by lads who intend to become farmers. That is a system which, as I believe, can be and might to be profitably applied to a great number of other trades besides agriculture, and its application is peculiarly suitable to the circumstances in which lads of sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen in the farming community find themselves.

The only point on which I desire to say a few words is that of the future policy in connection with the Corn Production Act—the policy which, as the noble Lord observed, remains the same as it was. He described that policy as one of special support to the farmers on special conditions, and I gathered from him that the Corn Production Act, although obviously subject to reconsideration and amendment in some of its details, still represents the considered policy of His Majesty's Government. In connection with that comes, of course, the main consideration of the relation between prices and wages. The noble Lord, Lord Bledisloe, made a most powerful speech on this subject, anti indicated the dilemma in which His Majesty's Government must naturally find themselves placed if the policy of the Corn Production Act is to be continued. In one respect I do not think Lord Bledisloe was entirely accurate. He seemed to argue that the fixing of a minimum wage of itself necessitated the fixing of a guaranteed price. That, I take it, is not the case Minimum wages are fixed in a number of industries in which there is no guaranteed profit or scale of prices. What I think the noble Lord meant to indicate was that if the minimum wage is fixed at a certain figure, then, unless you guarantee a price, the industry cannot be carried on. He went on to point out that, unless a. price of 65s a quarter for wheat was guaranteed, in the case of the least productive land the industry could not be carried on at a profit. He did not mention one difficulty which occurs in that connection—although I know he is well aware of it, and so is the noble Lord opposite—and that is the difficulty arising out of the fact that those on the most favourably situated and most productive land are bound to make what would be considered an excessive profit if the occupier of the poorest land on which wheat can possibly be grown is guaranteed an adequate return. That is a difficulty for which there may be some solution, although I confess I have never heard of one which can be considered complete.

But apart from that, assuming my noble friend Lord Bledisloe to be right in concluding that a 65s guarantee must be forthcoming, the question arises at once, as the noble Lord opposite indicated, whether the consumer and the taxpayer are going to stand having to find annually the great number of millions' of money which that figure means. What view the consumer and taxpayer will take, even when the case is set before them so persuasively as it was by the noble Lord, it is very difficult to foresee; and it is, of course, the main difficulty of His Majesty's Government in this connection that, however strongly they may state their intention to persevere in this policy, they are naturally unable to promise the farmer that a future Government or even a future Parliament may not take a. different view. The question, therefore, really will be how far the farming community will be able to absorb the idea that the country is so set upon this matter of production from arable land that it will be willing to make itself responsible for this vast subsidy in future years.

The noble Lord stated that if the country was not willing to undertake this task one of two things must happen—either a great proportion of land would go back to grass and a smaller amount of food would actually be produced, or we should be-advancing a step nearer the nationalisation of the land and presumably of the industry. I have always felt myself that what brought the possible nationalisation of the land and of the farming industry somewhat nearer was the institution of the system of control, inevitable though that may have been during the circumstances of the war. If I were asked to prophesy what is likely to happen in future years, although I do not know that my opinion is worth anything in particular in the matter, I do not myself believe that the citizens of this country will consent to make themselves responsible on a very large scale for a subsidy for the growing of corn. The noble Lord spoke of the undesirability of being dependent on the foreigner. That, of course, is a disadvantage of which something can be made, but we must remember in this connection that the so-called foreigner includes India, Canada, and Australia; therefore the particular argument of dependence on the foreigner does not arise. What does arise, of course, is dependence—as the noble Earl (Lord Selborne) reminds me—on sea transport; and we have all freshly in our recollection the anxiety which that dependence caused us up to a short time ago.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Ernie, used the expression that we were in fact a ''beleaguered island," and it was then true to say so. The question, however, really seems to rue to be largely this. Although we are now, happily, no longer beleaguered, shall we have to frame our agricultural system on the probability of our being beleaguered again? If the country does entertain that fear—a fear which was set before us so forcibly by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, in the course of former debates in this House as being within the bounds of reasonable probability, apart from the League of Nations and everything else, it may agree to encourage artificially in this country the growing of wheat on a very large scale. Personally, I question whether it will, although I do not pretend that my opinion in this matter is worth more than that of anybody else

What I think will persist to some extent is a considerable expansion of arable fanning as distinct from wheat-growing. To that, I imagine, the country will in a measure be disposed to adhere, but I also think that there will be some desire to go back to grass to a certain extent in some parts of England. Whether that will be a wise course or not, I have no desire to argue at the moment. I did not precisely gather from the noble Lord's speech what is to be the actual degree of control and of compulsion exercised on farmers in this matter of ploughing. I quite understand—in fact, it was most dearly stated by the noble Lord, and has been stated before—that those who do not farm their land to advantage, who farm badly (to put it simply), will be subjected to penalties, whether they be the owners or the occupiers of the land. But will those penalties be continued to be exacted in respect of the proportion of arable land on a farm, or wilt they merely have reference to the cleanness or foulness of a farm keeping the drains clear and matters of that kind? We have not, I think, been told how far the farmer is to regard himself in future as a free man, subject to a good deal of inspection and even to penalties if he does not come up to a reasonable standard in the conduct of his trade, on the ground that his trade is a national and not merely a private concern; or how far he is to be actually controlled and made to follow out a certain course of cultivation and system of farming, even though he prefers another.

The noble Lord mentioned the Royal Commission, but it was not entirely clear from what he said how far the carrying out of the policy which he explained so clearly depends on the Report of that Commission. Is this a Commission merely to ascertain the relation between prices and wages with a view to some amendment of the Corn Production Act when its present provisions are exhausted, or is it going to rove over the whole field of the agricultural future? And, it the latter, will the noble Lord's policy be hung up until the Commission has reported? That is a matter which is exercising farmers a good deal at this moment, and they have expressed the hope, even if the Commission is going to be long affair (as they assume it will be) and covers a great deal of ground, that it might at any rate issue some form of interim Report on which His Majesty's Government can take action. I confess I am not quite clear whether the noble Lord has to wait for what they say before he takes some of the steps which he indicated. I do not propose to touch on any of the many other interesting topics of which we have heard, but I should like to express what I am sure is the gratitude of everybody for the full statement of the noble Lord and for the manner in which he made it.

THE EARL OF SELBORNE

My Lords, I do not mean to stand long between your Lordships and the adjournment, but I should not like such a debate as the one to which we have listened to close without saving something on the subject, in view of my past connection with the Board of Agriculture and with the policy for which the noble Lord has spoken to-day. I congratulate the noble Duke warmly on having elicited such a. debate by a speech which, to my great regret, f only partly heard. If my noble friend the President of the Board will allow me to say so, his speech was courageous, eloquent, and deeply interesting. The time is too late to touch on that sketch which he gave us of the great work of agricultural reconstruction in the Office itself, in the framework of the Department and in its activities, especially in the sphere of instruction. All I can say is that there can be no better thing for agriculture in this country than that this work of reconstruction should be guided and directed by my noble friend.

I should not like to pass without notice the noble Lord's reference to the conditions tinder which he has worked since he became President of the Board of Agriculture. I think the difficulties of those conditions have been very insufficiently appreciated by the farmers of the United Kingdom. As he has told us, agriculture was touched and affected by the Orders of half a dozen different Departments. In each case all that the noble Lord could do was to state his view to the Minister concerned. He could not change, if he wished to, the decision of that Minister. The utmost he could do on an occasion of sufficient importance was to demand a decision from the War Cabinet. I venture to say that those are circumstances of extraordinary difficulty under which to act, and the claim my noble friend made for the success of his policy under those conditions was very modestly stated and is absolutely due to him. Farmers do not know, they cannot know, how a Government works, more especially a Government of the wholly strange character such as that which was improvised in war time. I have no hesitation in saying that many times my noble friend has stood between the farmer and a decision which would have been most hostile to his interests and would have added greatly to the difficulties of his enterprise. The fanner has never known what my noble friend has clone to avert that danger.

I will only briefly allude to the dilemma which has been so fully and plainly stated by the noble Lord, and by the noble Marquess, Lord Crewe. I wish to bring the House back and remind them, because our memories are short, how the new policy of the Corn Production Act came into being. The public and the consumer cannot be too often reminded of the facts. This policy was never asked for by the farmer or the landowner. They never asked for any Government help or interference at all. They had learnt from experience in time bitter struggles of the last thirty years. The State had done its worst for them by its neglect. The last thing they asked for was the interference of the State at the moment when they were once more beginning to feel their feet. But the State had to intervene for reasons of national safety. The beginning of this policy was the reference to the Committee over which I had the honour to preside, given to it by Mr. Asquith when he was Prime Minister. If you read the terms of that reference you will notice two things—first, that it had no reference whatever to war conditions; it was postwar and peace conditions to which alone it referred. The second thing is that the man who sent that reference to the Committee must have thought at the time that our past dependence on overseas food supplies was no longer consistent with the safety of the country in time of peace. You will also find, in almost the last page of the Report, a statement in black and white by the Admiralty, that in the future—not during the war only but in the future—it was not compatible with national safety that this country should remain as dependent as it had been on supplies brought from overseas. And the Admiralty told the nation that in any future war the danger was going to be far greater than it had been in the existing war. Those were the paramount reasons of national safety that demanded a reconsideration of the attitude of the State towards agriculture.

But there was another reason, and it was the one touched upon by my noble friend. "Was the land to become the plaything of the nation, or was it going to be used to produce all that it could of food or timber? Was the rural population to be allowed to dwindle away and the country to become a wilderness from the point of view of the manhood of the nation? Or was it essential for a healthy national state of society that the rural population should be increased as much as possible?" Those are still the questions which the taxpayer, the consumer, and the nation have to decide. What the nation cannot have is this—it cannot have it both ways. If the nation wants those things, then until the industry is thoroughly established in a position of permanent stability, obvious to all who consider its economic condition, there must be a permanent guarantee to the farmer against ruin. If, for reasons of national safety and welfare, the fanner is asked to plough land which he would not otherwise plough, then he must be guaranteed against loss from that which he does solely because the nation asks hint to do it.

That sum has been stated in rather alarming figures by the noble Marquess who leads the Opposition. He may be right, but I am quite sure he does not claim to be a prophet, and none of us can know what that sum is really going to be. It is impossible to tell what the price of corn is going to be in the years which lie before us, and the sum which the taxpayer under this policy will be asked to find in a given year will be the difference between the average price of corn and the guaranteed price. It may be a very small sum; it may, be a large one; it may be none at all. The whole question depends on the wise and fair adjustment of the guarantee to the economic conditions under which the industry is going to act. It is perfectly true, as the noble Marquess (Lord Crewe) has said that the fanner is not going to be asked to grow wheat on land which is not suitable for wheat. What he is going to be asked to do is to keep that land under the plough and grow oats or something of that kind, so that in the time of national emergency the land under the plough can be used, if necessary, to grow wheat. That is a different proposition from telling him to grow wheat on land which can only well carry oats. I return to the dilemma. If the nation, for reasons of national safety and national welfare, require so many more million acres to be under the plough than were before the war, then they have got to give the farmer that reasonable guarantee.

LORD RIBBLESDALE

By a permanent Act.

THE EARL OF SELBORNE

Yes, by a permanent Act. I was just coining to that. Of course, the unrest among the farmers, which is absolutely true and of which no one is more aware than the noble Lord, in my judgment arises from two causes. One is that the present Corn Production Act is not permanent, the second is that the increase of wages by the Wages Board has taken a form for which the farmer was not prepared, and it has alarmed him. Just as he had become accustomed to the way of settling in every district, quite unexpectedly to him he is suddenly told that he has to add 6s.6d. per week to that wage. I make no criticism of that decision. It is a very large and intricate question which it would be very unwise to attempt to deal with at the end of a debate like this. But the farmers did not expect this additional demand to be made upon them for wages, and it is that fact, coupled with the temporary character of the Corn Production Act, that is mainly responsible in my judgment for their present state of unrest

If the nation is not prepared to take this action, then these results follow as surely as night follows day. Millions of acres will go down to grass—many more than before the war—the rural population instead of increasing will still further decrease, and the wages of the few remaining labourers will not be maintained at the level to which the Wages Board has raised them. There is no possibility of multiplying in this country a great race of agricultural labourers, well paid and therefore contented with their lot—a reservoir of great strength to the nation—and maintaining those men at a high rate of wage. There is no chance whatever of that if the farmer is again to be submitted, as he was before the war, to the competition of the world without any kind of assistance from his own Government. You can make what regulations you like but you cannot force the farmer to continue to farm, and no man can be expected to farm if he is likely to be ruined by his farming. Therefore if be sees ruin staring him in the face, as it met his grandfather and his father forty, years ago, he will realise his capital and retire from the business, and there will be no employment at any wages for those labourers who, under the policy of my noble friend, may be multiplied and become one of the greatest strengths and the glory of England.

We know that at one time, though their condition was a very miserable one compared to that of the agricultural labourer to-day, the peasantry of England were called their country's pride. We know how, owing to a variety of causes about which there is much controversy, they dwindled in number till they reached their lowest level a few years before the war. There had been a slight rise again in the months immediately before the war, but their level was a miserably low one for the acreage of this country and for its powers of food production. When the war came we missed those men. It is no disparagement to the men from the industrial centres to say that we missed those millions of agricultural labourers who under other conditions might have been on our soil and in our villages.

It is not only a question of national defence; it is a question of national health. In every country in the world the men in the villages and the country districts are the reservoir of health for the men in the manufacturing industries in the towns, and this problem which confronts us to-day is a problem which confronts not only every country in Europe but one which confronts the United States of America at this moment. I was reading only yesterday an address by one of the leading agricultural authorities in America, and the title of that address was "Wanted: A National Agricultural Policy," and there was hardly a sentence in the first half of the address which; with slight adaptations, could not have been applied to the problem we are discussing to-day in England. Therefore I sincerely hope that my noble friend will not falter in that courage which he has displayed so conspicuously to-night, that he will take his fellow-countrymen into his confidence, that he will show them without flinching the choice that lies before them, and what the consequences will be in the future of a rejection of the policy that he advocates.

THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH

I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.