HL Deb 21 May 1941 vol 119 cc230-78
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (LORD MOYNE)

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name.

Moved, That in the event of the Fire Services (Emergency Provisions) Bill and the Allied Powers (Maritime Courts) Bill being received from the Commons, Standing Order No. XXXIX be considered in order to its being dispensed with for the purpose of passing those Bills through all their stages. —(Lord Moyne.)

On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

EARL DE LA WARR rose to ask His Majesty's Government about the progress of the campaign for increased food production; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, at a time like this, when the Battle of the Atlantic is in full swing, and at the end, moreover, of the second year's ploughing-up season of the war, I do not think that it is entirely inappropriate for us to attempt to review the position and to look backwards at what has been accomplished and forwards at what we hope to accomplish. Perhaps it may help if at first we try to see exactly what the problem is which is before us, and to see something of its scope. As it sometimes helps, in judging a picture, to see it alongside another, I should like, if I may, to attempt to compare our present position with that which prevailed during the last war. Such figures as I shall venture to lay before your Lordships have all been published or used by the Minister himself, and therefore they can be of no value to the enemy.

At the beginning of the last war, we had 34,000,000 acres of agricultural land; in 1919 we had 31,500,000, having lost 2,500,000 to roads, buildings, aerodromes and so on. In 1914 we had 11,000,000 acres of arable land; in 1939 the corresponding figure was 9,000,000. I have not been able to ascertain very clearly the figures for labour in 1914, but between the years 1928 and 1939 we lost over 160,000 men from agriculture in England and Wales alone. To turn for a moment to the shipping position, we know that we began this war with fewer ships than we had at the beginning of the last war. We know also that we have now to face the challenge of the aeroplane as well as of the submarine, and that both aeroplane and submarine are now based on the Atlantic ports of France. We know also that, in the case of the fewer ships that we have, a great deal more time is needed for them to get to their destination and for handling them at the ports. If we take these few facts and figures and look at them, and if we add to them the fact that in this war we have not got the Atlantic ports of Eire at our disposal, we get something like a picture of the problem we have to face and an idea of the vital importance of food production in the general picture of the strategy of the Battle of the Atlantic.

What has been the reply of the Government and the farmers to this challenge? The answer to that question is the story of a very remarkable achievement. Over 4,000,000 acres of grassland have already been ploughed, and we are now embarking on another year's ploughing-up campaign. We know that thousands of acres of derelict land have been reclaimed—thousands of acres which have been derelict ever since the last war. Thousands of miles of ditches have already been dug out, or are planned to be dug out, new drainage schemes have been initiated and hedges cut back—hedges that had virtually become small copses overgrowing the whole field. We have only to go about the country to see to what greater extent the permanent pasture is being harrowed and rolled this spring. That is indeed a record of which both the Ministry of Agriculture and the war agricultural executive committees who are working for the Ministry in each county can justly be proud. This country owes a debt of gratitude to both Ministers who have been in charge of this policy during the war—to Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, whose tact and conciliation started off this policy, won the adhesion of the farmers, and persuaded them of the necessity of throwing themselves into this great task, and to Mr. Hudson, the present Minister, whose energy, drive, and courage have given a most tremendous push forward and life to the whole campaign.

No one has a greater right to be proud than the farmers themselves. Every single farm in the country has been surveyed by an entirely unpaid body consisting of just over 4,000 farmers who have undertaken the arduous and by no means always pleasant task of inspecting their neighbours' farms, persuading them to make yet further efforts to plough up more acres, and possibly to adopt entirely new methods and policies on their farms. I can only say it is entirely due to the keenness and patriotism of the farmers themselves that it is possible to use the word "persuasion" because, although the powers of the war agricultural executive committees are very drastic, it is only in the most exceptional case that they have had to be used. There arc some, including members of the Select Committee on National Expenditure in another place, who think that these powers of serving orders and of eviction from the holdings have been med too leniently. It may well be that that has been so in certain cases; I am inclined to agree. At all times the bad farmer, like the bad doctor or lawyer or accountant, is letting down his industry, and to-day he is endangering the war effort of the country.

For the last twenty years or so it really has been very difficult to complain of a farmer falling into rather slack or backward ways. He has had very little encouragement, and prices have been steadily falling" almost the whole time until the last few years, but to-day, with prices that I think are generally admitted to be fair, and with subsidies for ploughing, for liming, for the application of basic slag, for ditching and for draining, and with the county agricultural committees armed with powers to grant credit and to hire machinery or even to go in and do the work themselves for farmers who have perhaps nether the tackle nor the knowledge for undertaking arable cultivation, there is now less excuse. At a time like this when the vast proportion—I was going to Say ninety per cent., but I am quite sure it is a great deal higher than that—of farmers are throwing themselves enthusiastically into this effort it would not be fair to them to allow those few laggards who, if they are not spurred on, would let down the good name of the industry and endanger our war effort, to continue to do so. But, I repeat, we are in this regard discussing only a very small minority.

I venture to stress the point that if yet more pressure is to be brought or. farmers to plough still more and to carry out generally more works on their farms in the direction of increasing production, it is essential that not only the Ministry of Agriculture, who, from the beginning have shown themselves fully alive to these difficulties, but the Government as a whole should show that they have faced the real issue. I would like to illustrate this point of difficulty. Let us take for a moment the question of labour, one of the main limiting factors in the campaign for increased production. At this moment we are being told, and in my opinion very rightly so, that during the next twelve months we have to plough up another large block of land—I think it will probably be something over a million acres—and yet at the same time we are being told that after harvest we are to have a further call-up of our labour. Let us try for a moment to put aside any question of the very right and proper sentiment that we would all naturally wish our industry to make the maximum contribution that it is able to make to the Armed Forces, and look at this matter purely from the point of view of increased food production. We have been told again and again that that is vital, and, therefore, we are right to assume that it is.

What is the position? I have already said that we have ploughed up 4,000,000 acres, and we are to plough up something over a million more. Take 5,000,000 acres as a round figure. I think your Lordships would agree that it is really a moderate estimate to say that we want, taking on an average, something like one man per hundred acres of extra arable. That gives us a need for 50,000 men. Here I shall mention a figure of which I am not absolutely sure, but I think it is approximately accurate. I think approximately 20,000 men had already been called up in the Territorials at the beginning of the war, and we arc now told that another 10,000 are going after harvest. That gives us a theoretical deficiency of 80,000 men. I use the word "theoretical" advisedly because we have now a vast increase of tractors—I think the figure is something like 80,000 as compared with 5,000 for the campaign during the last war. Moreover, we would be prepared to recognise that the industry was not working at full pressure during those periods of discouragement and depression. Let us halve that figure; it still remains at 40,000.

That is not the whole picture, because we all know that there are literally millions of acres in this country that cannot be ploughed or even improved for grazing—and that certainly is very important—as long as they remain in their present waterlogged condition. The chairman of one of our smaller agricultural county committees the other day made a statement that his committee required a thousand men to dig out 7,000 miles of ditches in that county. I know the county fairly well, and I would hesitate very much to say that he was exaggerating. Therefore, it is safe to say that if we could put 20,000 men on to nothing else but ditching and draining in this country they would not be able to do anything like all the work that requires to be done, but they could make a tremendous contribution to increased food production. I am afraid I have given your Lordships rather a lot of figures, but the fact is that we have a labour deficiency of something like 60,000 men, which we can balance by about 11,000 members of the Women's Land Army—excellent girls who are doing magnificent work, as I think anyone who has employed them would agree—and in addition, by a number of Pioneers and conscientious objectors.

Stated like that I think any of us must feel that, whilst it would be the sheerest effrontery for someone who is not in touch with the whole facts of the situation to say on which of our many hard-pressed fronts our man-power at the present moment can best be used, we are entitled, when we are told that the production of more food is vital, to say that clearly the matter cannot possibly be left where it is. I will venture, if I may, to make a suggestion. It is that there might be formed—I think something like this was done in the last war—a Labour Corps consisting of boys between 18 and 20 who are waiting to be called up and of that type of man to which the Minister of Labour referred the other day in a speech—I think he spoke of 9,000 or 10,000 of them—and also consisting of those men at present engaged in agriculture who are on individual farms which, owing to the peculiar circumstances of the farms, could possibly dispense with them. These last-mentioned men should be so dispensed with and substituted by girls on the particular farms, but of course their services are nevertheless needed in the food production campaign. Whether the Government prefer to deal with the situation by that method or by some other, I do hope that they will be quite clear in their minds that, while in any circumstances the farmer will continue as he has done to do his very best, that best is nevertheless bound to be conditioned by the amount of labour which is put at his disposal.

There is another matter which is of some concern, and that is shortage of fertilizers. That is a matter over which now nobody can really have any great control. One can only say that, thanks very largely to the efforts of the Minister and his officers, we have been able to obtain a much greater amount of nitrates and phosphates than we ever used before the war, but unfortunately as we always used so little that is not enough for this intensive campaign. That is nobody's fault; it is just a difficulty that we have to try to deal with. It seems to me that it increases the need for a. carefully-considered cropping policy, a policy designed not merely to maintain fertility but, if possible, actually to build up fertility. There are still many millions of acres of grassland that can and should be ploughed, and that would be vastly improved if they were ploughed, but they have not the reserves of fertility in them to admit of giving crop after crop on the normal basis.

How are we to deal with this problem? It must be dealt with. We have largely skimmed the milk of the best land, and the land that is left represents the bulk of our problem. We all know that one acre of land under the plough produces four or five or even six times as much as an acre of permanent pasture, but we also know that if we are going to increase production on anything like a long-term basis—and surely we have to face a long war now—we must maintain fertility, and not only maintain fertility with a shortage of fertilizers, but at the same time maintain our stock. I am not thinking of the question of culling. In so far as it is intended to ask us to cull our herds, we all recognise, I think, that there is a tragic number of thoroughly bad doers and inefficient producers among our herds that we would be much better without. I am not raising that question, but I do hope that on the general question of the principle of live-stock reduction the Government will look at it very carefully, and proceed with it extremely cautiously. I know that theorists will argue that an animal consumes more cereal equivalent than it produces in the form of pounds of meat or milk or eggs and, as theorists so often are, they are perfectly right. But they do not tell us the whole story. They have to go farther and compare the value of a pound of meat or eggs with the value of a pound of cereals, and not only in terms of nutrition and energy but even of morale.

It may well be that in an ideal world we should all be vegetarians, and that may become one of our peace aims, but I suggest that at the present moment our people have quite enough adjustments to make without fundamentally readjusting their habits of diet unless it is absolutely necessary. So far as I have been able to examine the pros and cons of the question I have not been able to convince myself that it is necessary, nor even desirable from the point of view of food production. To put one question alone, what is going to tread all the extra straw that we are growing on our arable land into dung unless we are allowed to keep our livestock? We have to ask ourselves, therefore, whether it is practical policy to go on ploughing more land and at the same time maintain live stock. I venture to give the answer that it is possible, and in fact that the two policies are not contradictory but complementary, and that we can only do the one it we are going to do the other. But that means being prepared to follow our Scottish farm colleagues and break with the old traditional system of farming in this country, which in my humble view has always tended to draw far too rigid a line between arable land and permanent pasture. We have got to be prepared in future to treat grass with respect and grow it is a crop.

I do not think our aim in this campaign ought to be so much the maximum of arable acreage as the minimum acreage of old worn-out pasture, pasture of the type which we see on hundreds of thousands, of acres in the country, pasture that produces on a generous estimate between 15 cwt. and a ton of hay per year, and gives two or three or possibly four months of very bad grazing. As one of our noted agriculturists said, it is fit for air and exercise and very little else. The ley, or temporary pasture, produces at least three times as much as permanent pasture. It rests the land, it gives more hay, and more grazing—more hay for feeding cattle in the winter, more grazing in the summer and incidentally a very much longer grazing season, extended to at least six months. If we pursue a policy on these lines, and if our schedulers in going round farms schedule not only land to be ploughed up but also land to sow down, there is going to be a chance, I believe, of continuing this policy at its present, and even at an increased, intensity. It would mean that we would be able to keep more cattle, that we would get more dung for growing yet more arable crops; that, having better grass, we could keep cattle on a smaller acreage and have a greater acreage that we can plough.

I venture to speak with some conviction on this point because of my own experience on 600 or 700 acres of very poor land bordering on Ashdown Forest. During the last five years the arable land has been increased from just under fifty acres to just over 300 acres, with the rest of it, except for thirty acres of woodland, growing high quality, high yielding temporary grass, and at the end of it a far greater production of stock has been turned out in the form of milk, mutton, and beef. I have spent some time on this point because I see no alternative, if we do not adopt some such policy, except that of being faced in a year or two with millions of acres of worn-out arable land and millions of acres less grass, which will compel us to slaughter stock. That would be a very tragic end to a campaign which, because of the energy and effort put into it, really has been one of the finest efforts of this war, both on the part of the Ministry and of the industry concerned.

There is only one further matter to which I should like to refer this afternoon. So far the points I have mentioned do not affect in any way the structure of our machinery; but the more I see of this campaign the more it seems to me that, whilst the machinery of it is fundamentally sound, yet in respect of the county war agricultural committees it does nevertheless need some addition. There are still thousands of acres of derelict land in the Welsh hills, and on the lowland hills all over the country. There are commons and so on also that could be brought into this campaign for increasing food production, but which as yet have not been brought in. This land does not seem to come within the purview of a great number of the county committees and, as I see it, some of it might not be very suitable for use in increasing very largely the direct production of food for human consumption. But if we could improve its value for grazing so that some of the sheep and young stock, which are having to be moved off the farms because of increased ploughing, could be put there, it might free a great deal of the lowlands for yet further ploughing.

The county committees are doing, and have done, a tremendous amount of reclamation work. I am very proud that my own County of East Sussex is one of the pioneers of down land farming and reclamation—with 3,000 to 4,000 acres already in hand and a great deal more being tackled this year. But some of these areas of which I am speaking—in Wales and elsewhere—are far too much for the average county committee to deal with. They are frequently measured in terms of tens of thousands of acres, and, in any event, many of these committees feel that they already have their hands full with looking after the normal farming areas and the normal problems connected with them. I would like to see the Minister setting up an ad hoc body which could deal with these large areas and with problems connected with reclamation. It may be that he will doubt the existence of sufficient of this land to justify the setting up of such a body; if so I would ask him to have a survey made throughout the country, because I think that if he did so he would find evidence to convince him that there is plenty of this land which could profitably be dealt with from the point of view of food production. There is no reason why this body—call it the Derelict Land Reclamation Commission or what you will—should in any way supplant the excellent work which is being done by the committees. It could be laid down that the new body should not deal with an area in a county until it had first discussed with the county committee which of the two bodies could most usefully deal with that particular amount of land.

I cannot help feeling that those of us who are engaged in this campaign for increased food production are a very fortunate body, because we have such immense opportunities in front of us. We have opportunities, at one and the same time, of making a vital contribution to the winning of this war and of laying the foundation for a happier and more prosperous countryside in the future. At the present moment we are being driven to look to our own soil and to the handling of it for our food and feeding-stuffs, whereas in the past we had grown only too accustomed to looking to the high seas for them. When we drive around the countryside and see the millions of acres that have been ploughed up, old worthless land now growing food, derelict acres being reclaimed, worn-out pastures being brought back to life by the plough, thousands of miles of ditches being cleared out, vast drainage schemes in operation, hedges coming down, surely we cannot but feel a certain thrill of hope. I think the most encouraging sign of all is the fact that wherever you go you feel that almost every single farm in the country is being, by just so much per cent., better run than it was before. We know full well that agriculture is being asked to do in a few months what it should have been given many years to do. We all of us must face the fact in our minds that, though many difficulties have been overcome, we have probably far greater difficulties ahead. But the soldier, in building his defences, cannot have the same feeling as we do. You and I all trust that when victory comes the defences which have been set up can be swept away, but we know that in doing this work of food production every bit of effort that is put into it is going to be doubly needed and doubly appreciated in the future.

This debate is not the moment for discussing future policy, but rather how first to win the war. But I do most earnestly express the hope that as a nation we have learnt our lesson; that our great towns in future will realise that the soil of this country is one of our most precious heritages and that the farmer and the labourer who care for it are worthy of their hire. I hope also that our farmers, on their part, will remember that we can only hope to persuade the towns to adopt that attitude if they on their side give the most drastic efficiency that they can in the production of the food which is the basic need of our people. It is because of what one sees when going about the countryside, because of what the farmer is doing at the present moment, now that at last he has been given some encouragement and with it a belief in himself and his usefulness to his country, that one ventures to look with confidence to the future and with confidence to the emergence out of the chaos and beastliness of this war of an agricultural industry, ready and equipped within itself to face not only the tasks, tests, trials and difficulties but also the possibilities that will come with victory. I beg to move for Papers.

LORD BINGLEY

My Lords, if I seem to enter into this debate rather earlier than your Lordships might expect, it is because I have been informed that my noble friend Lord Addison desires to speak later, and therefore there is room for smaller fry at this stage. It is not by desire that I am speaking now but upon instructions. The noble Earl who has just sat down has dealt more specifically with the larger farms and areas of cultivation. On the farming side he has given us a very admirable, instructive and eloquent speech which shows the grasp of the subject which we should expect from anyone with as much experience of it as he has. I propose to deal in a few words with the smaller cultivator, from whom, of course, we are expecting a very considerable increase in food production in the next winter and in the winters to follow. I think there are now fewer people who are inclined to be a little doubtful about the need for all this fuss about digging, and so on. All, or at any rate nearly all of them, have begun to realist; that unless we can produce an enormous amount of food at home we are going to be desperately short next winter and the winter that follows. It must be borne in mind that the food situation is not going to be put right immediately the "cease fire" has sounded. That is a point that many people do not realise.

I should like to emphasize what Lord De La Warr said about the drive of Ministers. The Ministry of Agriculture has put work into this problem and I hope it will have results. There has been a very vigorous campaign for increasing supplies from allotments and private gardens. There has also been a campaign to improve the cooking of vegetables—a very important point—and also to explain the nutritive; value of vegetables, so that it is not necessary to have beef steak and mutton chops. Many of us realise that we can do without either of those things. The National Allotment Society has now got 2,000 affiliated societies, and 220 new ones since the 1st of January, which I think illustrates the result of the campaign—or one of the results anyhow. Under the Domestic Food Producers' Council of the Ministry of Agriculture a number of conferences have been organised all over the country in the larger centres. We have been to Liverpool, Manchester, Gloucester, Bristol, practically all the bigger centres in the whole country, and we have been urging that the local authorities should exercise to the full the powers which they have now got of acquiring land for the purpose of gardens and allotments. We have been urging them to extend the activities of their horticultural staffs, and we are asking them to organise an increase in allotments and a fuller cultivation of private gardens. All that, I hope, is going to produce a very considerable result this summer. There have been demonstration plots shown in many places. I do not know whether your Lordships would like to walk to Grosvenor Gate in this city, where you will see a demonstration plot, which I think will seem to you to be a very useful effort as showing people how an allotment should be plotted and how it should be cultivated.

It is easier to organise urban centres under one central authority than it is to deal with a more scattered community in the more rural places, and for the country areas the Government have set up a County Garden Produce Committee. We are organising county committees in every county on the same lines. We have had the most valuable help from the Federation of Women's Institutes. They have a very widespread organisation all through the country and they have been perfectly splendid in the way they have been helping us. They have taken over the secretarial work of that committee and they are working well and hard throughout the country to promote the object that we all have in view. The National Council of Social Services and the National Allotments Society are also helping very considerably, and I hope that machinery will shortly be built up by which a very much greater increase in, and a better knowledge of, the scientific method of using allotments and gardens for feeding people throughout the year may be instituted.

We are holding conferences all over the country now. In the country districts we mean to organise every village and every small town. The propaganda which has been used is in the direction of urging skilled planning by which we can have food from the allotment and garden practically all through the year, and, if possible, to provide a family with what they want and not to leave them merely with a surplus of summer vegetables, such as happened last summer, which disappointed so many people. Many people complain that some kinds of vegetables they could not get rid of, as they had produced too much of the wrong sort of vegetables. What we ask to be done is to develop the non-perishable vegetables; if there is any spare room it should be used to produce non-perishable vegetables. We want to organise the sale and distribution in country towns and villages of all these non-perishable vegetables so that every area can have its own local supply on its doorstep. We have had the greatest help from the Royal Horticultural Society, who have conducted a series of lectures and sent out a great many instructors. They have some 500 volunteers prepared to go into the country to help those who need assistance and skilled technical advice.

Like the noble Earl who moved, I have one or two difficulties to mention, and of course a difficulty common throughout the country, which nobody can control, is the difficulty of the late, cold and dry, spring. I do not think that this has affected the gardens so much as the big agricultural production, especially the newly-ploughed land. The removal of skilled gardeners is a very serious problem. Nobody wants to stand in the way of supplying the necessary men for the Army. At the same time I know of several cases in which quite ambitions schemes have been started in the hope and on the implied promise that certain men would be allowed to stay, who have then been taken away. That may be necessary, but it is a danger, and it is going to mean that production will be smaller than it would be otherwise. There are a great many private gardens in the country which will, if properly worked, produce a great deal which will help in this direction. Of course, the shortage of labour generally is a matter of which all of us are very conscious, and with what the noble Earl said about that I fully agree. If shortage of labour means that production of all this new arable land is going to be less, that will be a very serious matter. The Land Army, of course, are doing very good work. Everybody knows that; but there are not enough of them and they cannot do everything. They are doing their very best and I think we owe a debt of gratitude to them. A great many of them are only slightly trained, if trained at all.

What I am anxious about is in regard to all this newly-ploughed land. In a great many areas it has been the tradition, I may say, for centuries, to utilise it for grass, for dairying, cheesemaking, and so on, and generations have grown up on that land who can think only in terms of grass and cattle. How are you going to turn them suddenly into skilled arable experts? Unless we are very careful, we may find next season that good grass has been spoilt and that the supply of dung has become very much smaller than before, so that the fertility of the land will suffer considerably, simply because there is insufficient arable knowledge among those who are doing their best to make their arable farms a success. What is the answer? If this land has to be ploughed and is properly managed, it can produce a very large amount of food, so that what we have to do is to provide as much instruction and help as we can for those who need it. I am wondering whether it would be possible to organise in each county some method by which retired farmers—but not very old men, with fixed ideas—could give assistance where it is wanted. Some farmers might find it a little difficult to accept advice of that kind, but I do not think that there would be many who would take that view. A great many of these men, especially in some of the dales—as, for instance, Wensleydale, in my part of the country—would welcome assistance of that kind, and it would help them to make a success of their operations. I apologise for having kept your Lordships for so long, but I do hope that this small cultivation will before very long be producing a very large amount of food in this country.

VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE

My Lords, we have listened to two most illuminating and instructive speeches, with the general trend of which I am in agreement. I should like to congratulate the noble Earl on initiating this debate in a most informative and instructive speech, and, incidentally, I should like to congratulate him on setting such an excellent example in his own area in the reclamation of land and its utilisation for more productive food purposes. We stand at the parting of the ways. The food outlook is very far from cheering, and there is a real danger of too much complacency about the present measure of food production in this country, bearing in mind the increasing difficulty of obtaining food in sufficient quantity and of the right description from overseas.

I was particularly glad to hear what my noble friend Lord Bingley said about the small cultivator. It is no exaggeration to say that during the most critical period of the last war, when I had some considerable administrative experience at the Ministry of Food, it was the small cultivator who, in the aggregate, produced more surprising results in the output of essential food than did the larger farmers. There has undoubtedly been a greater amount of drive in relation to the small cultivator during the last few months, since my noble friend Lord Bingley was appointed to supervise that branch of cultivation, but in my judgment there is still an insufficient stimulus to potential small producers in a great many parts of Great Britain. Lord Bingley has referred to the expert gardeners of many large country houses being drawn into other branches of public service, whereas quite obviously the optimum utility of such men is to supervise the small cultivators in their area. I do not think that they have been brought into that work sufficiently, or been given sufficient encouragement.

There is one factor in relation to the small cultivator in respect of which I hope that there will be an alteration in Government policy. I have already referred to it in your Lordships' House. It is that if the small cultivator—whether it be the private gardener, the cottage gardener or the allotment holder—produces more food of the right kind than he himself needs, he shall have some guarantee that the surplus over and above his own domestic requirements can be put on the market without loss to himself. So far as I can see, the policy of the Ministry of Agriculture is to let these small people produce enough for their own requirements, so that they make no inroad, or 10 large inroad, on the pool of the nation's food, but to give them no encouragement to produce a surplus which they can be sure of marketing at a secured price. I am quite sure that that is a mistake. In my own part of the West of England, there are any number of men who are prepared to-day to produce an increased quantity of potatoes, beans, peas and other like crops, if they can be sure that they will not be landed with a glut, particularly with regard to potatoes, of which they have no means of disposing.

I referred to beans a moment ago. I was very glad to hear my noble friend Lord Bingley say that meat is not, in the last resort, an absolutely essential food for the maintenance of human physique and human health. There are other forms of protein food, and during the last war, I think wisely, farmers and gardeners alike were encouraged to grow as much protein vegetable food as possible in the form of beans, peas, lentils and so on, and the dairying districts to produce as much cheese as possible. I do not think that any scientist or doctor would dispute the fact that, if there is a sufficiency of both vegetable protein and such nitrogenous food as cheese, there is no great necessity for preserving the meat animals of this country, with the possible danger of consequently reducing the dairy stock. In a crisis, meat is of far less importance than milk and milk products. I venture to hope that the Minister of Food will emphasize that very strongly to the Ministry of Agriculture, in case organised pressure is brought to bear, by those who are interested in fatting beasts, to preserve their store cattle in preference to the preservation in dairying districts of dairy herds.

The noble Earl who initiated this debate has quite rightly congratulated the Minister of Agriculture on his drive, his energy and his courage. I am quite prepared to endorse that tribute, but, to my mind and to that of others, there is one serious lacuna in the personnel of the Ministry of Agriculture; and I venture to say that it would be a great comfort and reassurance to the agricultural community generally if there were now at the elbow of the Minister, as there was during the last war in the person of Mr. Edward Strutt, a farmer of outstanding reputation and practical experience, who is prepared to guide him in relation to the actual practice of agriculture in its different phases. It is not very evident that There is such a person at the present time. I cannot remember any single factor in the food problem during the last war which caused a greater feeling of security than the fact that there was an agriculturist of acknowledged practical experience always ready to advise the Minister of Agriculture in relation to actual farming processes in different parts of the country.

I hope I shall not be regarded as over-bold if I suggest that it would also increase confidence in the Government's food policy if there were greater co-ordination, if not actual merger, between the Ministries of Agriculture and Food. This policy has been found salutary in other directions. As regards war materials, munitions, and the like, only recently co-ordination has been effected by bringing the branches of production and supply—and in agriculture also we have to consider the problems of production and supply—by bringing these branches of the Committee of Defence under one co-ordinating Ministerial chief. The same process, I suggest, is urgently needed in regard to both human and animal food. Surety the measure of the needed production of the soil of Britain, and indeed the character of that production, can only be gauged by a full knowledge of the actual stores of essential food in the country and, still more, knowledge as to the availability from time to time of these foods from overseas sources. This is information that has to be possessed, and possessed to the full, by my noble friend Lord Woolton, and I am not at all satisfied that the policy framed by the Ministry of Agriculture shows clear indication that that full knowledge is always available there.

Within the sphere or ambit of food production itself, I suggest, there is need for strong and more effective departmental cohesion and control by experienced, practical agriculturists, speaking and acting with the full authority of the Government. As Mr. Lloyd George pointed out in very emphatic terms in the House of Commons quite accurately a month ago, some county war agricultural executive committees are efficient, energetic, and courageous, while others are very far from being so. Consequently the productive effort in these areas falls far short of what the nation has a right to expect in a time of acute crisis and in face of the fact that, as we are all beginning to realise, food may come to be the deciding factor in this present life and death struggle. There may be such persons in existence, but I do not see any particular band of officers of practical knowledge going round the country with a view to setting a standard of efficiency on the part of these various county war agricultural executive committees. It is no good in one area having a really efficient body of men stimulating production in every possible way, and in another area of possibly greater fertility having a large number of people who are not pulling their weight to the extent the nation demands. In my own County of Gloucester we are particularly fortunate in having excellent cultivation officers, as they are called, who are all farmers of long experience and admitted success on their own farms, and whose word naturally carries weight with the whole farming community, be they large farmers or smallholders. The result is, relatively speaking, remarkable both in my own county and in the adjoining County of Wilts, where again there is a very efficient war agricultural executive committee. The anticipations of food production have, in practice, been proved to be an under-estimate.

I was glad to hear what my noble friend Lord Bingley said with regard to ploughing up pasture. The food problem has been almost exclusively, in the public eye, concentrated on the ploughing up of pasture, with special emphasis laid upon old and particularly good pasture. Quite candidly, I think it would be a serious loss of a valuable national asset, even during this war, if it comes to be a long war, as it may, if these valuable old pastures to be found in Leicestershire, Somerset, the Vale of the Severn, and elsewhere, which will feed a bullock to the acre, are ploughed up with a view to producing, for the time being, a crop of corn—wheat, oats, or barley—for temporary human consumption, regardless of the fact that what you are doing is to feed your land, not with fertilizers, but with ploughed-up turf. When that particular fertilizer comes to be exhausted, as undoubtedly it would be in the course of two or three years, you will have lost a most valuable pasture capable of carrying to a maximum extent your best dairy cattle without anything of permanent value to replace it. In other words, I am sure that too much stress is being laid on the merits of indiscriminate ploughing up of permanent pasture as the means of augmenting food production. It is no doubt a commendable process under existing conditions, especially in view of the deplorable infertility—progressing for at least a generation—of the land of Great Britain, but it has its limitations. If milk is the chief desideratum, as I hope your Lordships will make it clear that in your view it is, these limitations need careful watching, at any rate in the chief dairying districts which are largely found in the south and west of England. It leads ulti- mately, as I pointed out, to soil exhaustion.

I am tempted to ask, have the Ministry of Agriculture sufficiently visualised what is to be the position in 1943 and 1944, if this war continues as long as that? Their policy seems to be based on the certain anticipation that the war will come to an end during the next year or eighteen months. In other words, there should, in my judgment, be proper selective scheduling of the grassland that has to be ploughed. There are many pastures, particularly in areas where the rainfall is abnormally high, as of course it is in the West of England and in Wales, which are eminently suited for milk production and which, though they make fair arable land in exceptionally favourable seasons, are in the ordinary course liable to serious failures. There were serious failures in regard to them in the; last war, and there will be serious failures in regard to them on this occasion if they are indiscriminately ploughed up. In some of these cases such crops as kale and roots have proved valuable where the land has been ploughed up to a small extent for the support of dairy cows under existing conditions, but not for the production of corn, especially in many of those cases, as Lord Bingley has pointed out, where the farmers, being small dairy farmers, have no experience and knowledge of the use of implements for arable cultivation. There is a tendency—I do not know whether it operates in all counties—to try to Induce every farmer, small or great, to do his bit by ploughing up a part of his holding.

I suggest that the cultivation of small fields on small dairy farms, where no implements are available, is to be deprecated. It results in a serious wastage of implement hours through travelling from one farm to another. It would be true economy of time and labour, implements and other machinery to centralise the arable areas as far as practicable. I would venture also to suggest that in order that full use may be made of the available tractors and other implements there should be a co-operative pooling of those implements, particularly tractors, so that they can be used collectively on the scheduled areas more suitable for arable cultivation, instead of being allowed to lie idle for a time on the farm of a fortunate owner while another possibly neighbouring farmer is unable to get the use of such machinery at all.

In connection with the small dairy holding it would surely be wise to discourage the running of ewes on the pastures in the spring for the production of early lambs. These fat lambs are unwanted and expensive luxuries in times of serious emergency like the present. These ewes, most noticeably this year when we have very little grass so far, and very little undergrowth in our meadows and pastures owing to the east wind, the night frosts and continued drought, are eating up the early grass that is so sadly deficient and which should be available for the dairy cows. It would not matter so much if feeding-stuffs were plentiful and cheap, but we know quite well that they are not. Therefore this young grass, which is particularly nutritious, should not be wasted on the sheep, but should be kept as far as possible for our dairy cattle. It would be far better policy, as I think my noble friend Lord De La Warr suggested, to rear the lambs on the poorer farms, and on the hill farms, and let the wether sheep be grazed on the dairy farms when the grass is more plentiful than it is in the spring.

This is a late season, and we shall probably have to face a wet summer; at any rate we ought to be prepared for that eventuality. There will be the greatest difficulty in getting the hay crop dealt with, apart from the use of silos. Although the knowledge of making silage and the ownership of silos are spreading there are still relatively few in the country. Every scrap of meadow herbage should be turned into hay this year so far as the weather permits. How are you going to do it in the light of shortage of labour? I do not know whether my noble friend Lord Woolton would agree with me, but it looks as if the provision of food for animals is going to be more difficult than for human consumption. In some districts arrangements are being made for boys from the schools to have a holiday during the hay harvest, and I hope that that policy will be adopted by the county education committees in most of the counties of Great Britain. But what would be even more valuable—and this I should like to suggest to the Government—would be for the military authorities, wherever practicable, to allow men who have homes in the villages to return to them for the hay harvest. There must be in many parts of the country military camps where the men s optimum value would be back in their villages to help for the harvest of the hay.

Labour is no doubt the crying need. In machinery we have had, as Lord De La Warr pointed out, a great increase, but there is room for a great deal more if we are going to fill the gap that has been caused by the growing depletion of agricultural labour in recent years. But machinery is by no means a complete substitute. The tractor has displaced the farm worker who used to do the hedging and the ditching and kept the field drains open. Moreover, it has encouraged slip shod cultivation prior to sowing of farm crops. You are getting nothing like the good seed beds we used to get when there were more labourers on the land and fewer tractors. But the tractor is inevitable; we have got to have it.

I would lay particular stress upon the waterlogged condition of land to which Lord De La Warr referred. I happened to be the Chairman of a Royal Commission on Land Drainage in England and Wales whose Report eventually was translated into statutory authority by the Drainage Act of 1930. The waterlogged condition of this country is a growing danger. It must particularly be borne in mind that waterlogged land becomes so cold in the subsoil that it delays germination, and, in a late spring like the present, it very materially reduces the amount of food that the land is capable of producing. A large number of the field ditches are to-day not merely silted up but overgrown with every sort of rubbish, including the roots of the hedges which, of course, thrive in the silt of the ditches, and I question very much whether the ditches are worth reopening at the present time, and whether it would not be a great deal better, particularly as the matter is urgent, to excavate special trenches along the headlands, or in other suitable places, so as to carry off the water which is not being carried off at the present time by the choked-up field ditches. I suggest that it would be better in such cases to ignore the ditches altogether and trust to newly-made temporary ditches formed by the use of an excavator to carry off the excessive water.

There is one other thing I should like to press, and that is the enormous importance under existing conditions of expert advice being available in every part of England to help the ignorant or the inefficient farmer, where it is possible, preferably to turning a man by drastic action off his farm. If he is susceptible to advice and guidance let us have some practical person available who can give him that advice and guidance, and if he does not listen to it, if he is contumacious, if he is not producing from his farm what the nation needs, then turn him off his farm. I am thinking of something like the particular type of stimulator that is to be found in most continental countries. I venture to say that the time has arrived when we ought to have what, in other countries, are called agronomes, people who are good practical farmers and who are effective links between the Government on the one hand and the actual cultivators on the other. These men could go about the country and it would be their business periodically to visit every agricultural holding in the country and give advice. In other countries such advice is very much welcomed by the least experienced and more ignorant husbandmen. If the advice of these persons is not accepted then, but not until then, you should use compulsory powers on behalf of the Government. I hope that at least in our post-war agricultural policy we shall see the institution of agronomes, by whatever name you choose to call them. In New Zealand we called them divisional inspectors. They should at any rate be men who will have the knowledge and the power of functioning so as to stimulate good husbandry and increase the output of food.

My noble friend who initiated this debate spoke about fertilizers. I want to know where the Government are to get the fertilizers. I only hope they will have the fertilizers. There is a steady process of phosphate starvation going on in this country at the present time, and the more you plough up your grassland and take crops off the resultant arable land the more that phosphate starvation is going to become obvious. Where is that phosphate to be found? Superphosphate is generally applied on light land and that is made very largely from North African phosphate rock. I would like to know whether that phosphate rock or superphosphate is available in sufficient quantities at the present time. The only alternative is basic slag. We have found in the West of England that we cannot get basic slag unless it was ordered eight months ago, and not always then, and we are told that the reason is lack of transport facilities. Is that lack of transport facilities going to continue indefinitely? I venture to hope that some effort will be made to improve transport facilities, so that at least one of these phosphatic fertilizers will be available.

There is one other matter on which I should like to say a word. Farmers are not good clerks, but they are being asked to fill up an immense number of forms. A farmer's maximum utility is seen when he is out on his farm doing practical work and guiding his men. Far too much time is being spent in filling up—most inadequately, I am afraid—complicated forms sent to the farmers. Then there were the coupons. Men with farms of every size have had to fill up anything from twenty to 300 or even 400 coupons. Those coupons were confusing even to scientists—I claim to be something of a scientist and I have been confused—but though the farmer is no longer obliged to sign them he has to spend far too much time filling up these and other forms, and I think that he ought to be exonerated to a large extent from that duty.

Land is being taken over, in some cases, by county war agricultural executive committees. I would suggest, in view of the way in which women arc coming forward to be trained for land work, that where land is taken over because of bad cultivation or for any other reason by county war agricultural committees, a training camp for members of the Women's Land Army should be established. If that were done a larger number of experienced women workers would become available. If you want a woman land worker it is not at all easy to get one in many cases, particularly if you want a trained one, but if you have camps as I suggest you would have a very valuable pool of labour on which to draw. I hope your Lordships will forgive me for taking up so much time, but I have done so only because I honestly feel that, however much we may admire the drive of the Minister of Agriculture, it will not do to be complacent. We have to raise from the soil of this country every ounce of food that we can, and I am perfectly sure that your Lordships at all events will do your utmost to secure that result.

LORD BROCKET

My Lords, I feel rather like the last speaker on the toast list who has had a good many of his points already mentioned by previous speakers, but that will be an advantage to those of your Lordships who wish to discuss fire brigades, because it means that I shall be on my feet a very short time. The debate this afternoon has come at a very opportune moment. I feel that we are greatly indebted to the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, for having initiated it. I hope we shall feel equally pleased with the speech of the noble Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, at the end of the debate. There are a few points which have not been raised already, but before I get to them I would like to say a word emphasizing the very serious condition of labour which the noble Earl put before your Lordships. I own a good deal of land in different parts; I farm in various parts of England and Scotland, and I meet a lot of farmers. They are very worried about the labour position. They are equally as patriotic as any other body of men, and they would wish their employees to contribute their full work towards the war effort, but if a further ploughing campaign is to be undertaken this autumn they feel it would be most unfortunate if a lot of labour were taken from the farms.

That brings me to the subject of drainage. I noticed the approval of noble Lords when any reference was made to drainage, and of course for years before the war drainage was very greatly let down. In the matter of drainage I cannot help feeling that landowners can do a good deal to help their tenants. If I may mention my own case, I have made it known to all my tenants that I will pay half their share towards the cost of draining farms. In other words I will pay 25 per cent., the Government 50 per cent. and the tenant 25 per cent. It very often happens that tenants think they are improving the landowner's farm by a drainage scheme, whereas in fact, in addition to that, they are making the farm more profitable to themselves. I feel that landowners can do a great deal to help drainage schemes. Another point mentioned by the noble Earl was the Scottish system of ploughing up grassland. The question of water supply to the fields is of course connected with that. If the Ministry would get into touch with individual landowners, or would get organisations of landowners to circularise their members, they might help food production very much by getting water laid on to the fields and working in co-operation with tenants if they adopt the three-year ley system of Scottish farms.

I must apologise to your Lordships if my points seem rather like a catalogue, but I am afraid they are. Another point raised by the last speaker, the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, had reference to milk. In many parts it is impossible to go in for milk in the way many farmers would like because buildings are inadequate and farmers in those parts have always gone in for beef cattle. It is the beef cattle which make the manure in the yards. Although I agree with the noble Viscount that milk is the most essential of foodstuffs, and that perhaps milking herds should take precedence over beef cattle, I hope the Ministry will not lay down the very strict rule that milk should take precedence over beef cattle in all parts of the British Isles. Regarding the reduction of live stock, I would like to emphasize what the noble Earl said, that unless we keep a good head of cattle in this country to make the straw from the increased arable crops into manure we shall be very short of fertility in the land a few years hence.

One point which I think is most important—I do not know whether the noble Duke will be able to answer it—is that the price for this year's wool clip has not yet been announced by the Government. I believe representations have been made already, but I am told by my friends who have something to do with it that ever since the last wool clip there has been a wrangle going on between different interests and different Government Departments on the price of the wool clip. That is important. Farmers like to know where they are. In Scotland we do not know what will be the price of this year's wool clip, and we do not know what will be the difference between the price of washed and unwashed wool, whether it will be three halfpence, twopence or threepence a pound. The position will prove very unfortunate indeed for the farming industry. I wish that some high person or body of persons in the War Cabinet could settle the squabble between the different Departments and get the price announced.

The noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, made use of a very peculiar word, agronome: in other words a man who knows all about agriculture. That brings me to the subject of county war agricultural executive committees. These are rather like the curate's egg; they vary. Some are very good, but others are not so good. In the lowest strata of the organisation of the county war agricultural executive committees you have parish representatives and local district representatives. I would not like to mention any individual instance, but I can assure the noble Duke that in certain parts of England that for this purpose shall remain nameless, there is far too much nepotism, brother-in-lawism and other sorts of isms in these local representatives. It is almost impossible, in some places, for a landowner or anyone else who is related to most of the local representatives to have his land ploughed up. I know one man who owns fifty acres, all of which was tillage a few years ago, which he has just recently let at £6 an acre for grazing for this summer, and he has had to plough up none of it. Local gossip is that he is related to one of these people and, therefore, while some small farmers with water-logged meadows have to plough them up, he gets off scot-free. I hope that perhaps Lord Bledisloc's agronomes can be imported before the end of the war and that they can be used to go round and give their opinion on these local disputes. If this could be done it would help greatly the work of the county war agricultural executive committees.

Another subject, which is a very active one in my part of the country just now, is that of the wire-worm. I do not know if the noble Duke, or the Ministry of Agriculture, can tell farmers how to get rid of the wire-worm. I think that, perhaps, many farmers did not realise, when they ploughed up old pastures, how very virulent and active the worm would be. In this connection I feel it is possible that an extra supply of very heavy rollers would be helpful, but for some reason or other I cannot buy one at the present time. If the war committees could have supplies of heavy rollers to lend, I think it would be very helpful in fighting the worm.

I do not intend to stand between your Lordships and Lord Addison and the noble Duke or the Bills which are to follow this debate, but there is one remark made by Lord De La. Warr with which I do not agree. I think it is about the only remark he made with which I disagree. He said that we have got to win the war first and discuss the question of a long-term policy afterwards. I entirely concur with him that we have got to win the war, but I think that during the war, perhaps, is the time for some people to consider what the long-term policy should be for agriculture. I cannot help feeling that when peace comes the situation may be the same a; it was after the last war. Farmers all over the country are saying: "We are ploughing up our land and doing everything we can to help the country, but after the war we shall get let down just as we were last time." I consider, therefore, that it is very important that the Government should devote themselves to the consideration of a long-term policy. If I may say so, I think the present Government are more fitted than any other Government to do this because they represent all three main political Parties. I do not think any long-term policy for agriculture can be discussed, agreed upon and put into operation unless all three Parties agree on the main heads. I also think that that long-term policy should, if possible, be taken out of the realm of Party politics. We all know that farming is a slow business. It takes a long time to grow a crop and get a farm into really good heart. It lakes perhaps a shorter time to ruin it. But I cannot help feeling that, under our political system, with the possibilities of changes of Government from one side of the House to another, if agriculture could be taken out of Party politics as much as possible, it would be very greatly to the good of agriculture and the country in general.

On that subject I do not intend to dilate because it is not the subject of our debate, but I would like, if I may, to set out four points for the long-term policy which, perhaps, the Government, the Ministry of Agriculture, other bodies outside and certain individuals could consider. I think that perhaps the most important point from the national view is point number one. This is: Security for the land itself by the maintenance of fertility. If fertility is not maintained, and it may not be unless the war policy is arranged on the right lines, we shall lose an immense wealth in our own soil. I think everyone will agree with that point. The second point is: Security, good wages and improved amenities for the farm worker. The third point is: Security and guaranteed reasonably profitable prices for the farmer. The fourth point, which I think is quite important and which would probably be agreed upon by all sides of the House because I have inserted a certain word, is: Security of tenure for the efficient landowner. I do not intend to put forward the view that bad farmers, bad landowners or bad people in any profession should be justified. But I do say that the good and efficient landowner has a great part to play both during the war and after the war. I hope, therefore, that the Ministry of Agriculture are considering a long-term policy, and I trust that the various remarks and statements which they have heard here to-day may conduce to them bringing out in due course a really good policy for agriculture which will be to the benefit of the nation at large.

LORD GAINFORD

My Lords, whatever the demerits of your Lordships' House may be in contrast to the merits of another place, I do feel that, when we are discussing food production, the experience and knowledge of many of your Lordships are very valuable to the community and probably very much wider than those possessed by the representatives in another place. Therefore I welcome this debate. I have often addressed your Lordships in connection with the heavy industries, but having lived in agricultural areas all my life, and having been identified with the management of large farms—chiefly on the surface where collieries are working the coal underneath—I claim that I possess as much interest in the development of agriculture and in food production as any member of your Lordships' House.

There are only one or two points on which I would like to dilate. I certainly agree with the last speaker in his references to an adequate wage being secured for the agricultural labourer and the hind, and to adequate prices being guaranteed to the farmer, so that he may have a profitable industry which will encourage him to do his best. But the point I want to make, first of all, is that the people of the country at the moment are feeling a shortage of food because they are unable to obtain commodities to which they have been accustomed, and I think a debate of this kind is valuable if the Government can allay the anxiety that exists in the minds of many that in the coming winter we may be short of food. There is a drought, certainly, in the north of England of a very serious character. Oats which have been sown in large quantities in grassland which has only recently been tilled have not yet germinated and there is a prospect of a very late harvest, with all the difficulties in connection with securing that harvest, and we all know that the million additional acreage which has to be ploughed will not produce a crop which is going to be of any great value even the following year. I agree with Lord Bledisloe that we must not lose the important effect of producing milk and stock wherever the grazing land justifies retention of that grazing land in a proper condition of cultivation.

Lord Bledisloe alluded to the importance of manures. We cannot manure our cereal land unless we have got stock to produce that manure which is essential to production. There is a great quantity of basic slag to be obtained in this country, and I am glad to be able to assure Lord Bledisloe that the transport system of this country has rapidly improved in the last few weeks, and there is every prospect of its being maintained adequately in order to help the conveyance of basic slag from the areas in which it is produced to the areas in which it is wanted. Sulphate of ammonia is also being produced by our coke ovens in increasing quantities. That will be all to the good.

The point I want to emphasize more than any other—living, as I have done, on the borders of dales in Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland—is the great importance of additional drainage enterprise on the part of the Government. The quantity of grass which can be grown on the moorlands is very considerable and can be increased in relation to the number of sheep which may be on the moors. I recollect seeing on one occasion an experiment made by a Scottish landlord who enclosed a large portion of a moor on a hillside with a wire fence so that no sheep could get on to it. In three years that grassland on the side of that hill where enclosure had taken place was absolutely purple, thick with heather, and no grass existed there at all. It brought home to me how important it is that sheep should be recognised as one of the stocks which we require on certain lands, especially on moorlands. I do not take exception to Lord Bledisloe's reference to ewes not being encouraged on certain lands, but I think more ought to be done for the black-faced sheep and for a guarantee to the farmer in connection with the wool. Not only will sheep contribute toward an increase of grass, but they will of course produce a lot of mutton as well as wool, which are very valuable commodities.

How are we to get this increased drainage done on these moorland farms and on these many small-holdings which exist in the dales of Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland? I think it can be done by utilising some of the labour which is still available in this country. You cannot turn a lot of women suddenly into land drainers, but you can employ a large number of men who are now doing nothing, about half a million I should think of the unemployed, many of them men who are no longer able to work underground or in mines or in quarries. Those are the sort of men who have been accustomed to the use of a shovel and spade, and if they could only be taken to certain places where there is bogland and land which requires draining, I believe their labour could be utilised to the advantage of the community. It is not for me to suggest that the military in, every case might be turned to purposes of that kind, but when I see a lot of men day after clay walking along the roads and doing no manual work, it does occur to me sometimes that a little spadework might help them to keep fit, just as well as these long marches along the road, which in fact only harden the skin and blister the feet. But that is a side issue. The one thing I want to press upon the Government is the importance of draining our land. so that we can get more production and that the pastures may be improved. I live in the district where shorthorns were first of all produced, and we still believe in shorthorns in our district. I think no better beast can be introduced for the encouragement of milk production than the shorthorn bulb However, these are little details. I rose in order to impress upon the Government the importance of using labour where it is available and in- creasing the amount of drainage work which is so needed throughout this country.

LORD CORNWALLIS

My Lords, I do not possess anything like the agricultural knowledge of many noble Lords who have already spoken, and perhaps it is with diffidence that I should speak at all, because I am actually one of the Minister's agents, one of those people who is Chairman of a war agricultural committee. Perhaps I should not rise in any debate and offer any criticism, and indeed any comment of mine will not be criticism because I know from very personal contact the drive that the Minister has put into the efforts he is making. I should also like to pay tribute to the noble Earl who has initiated this debate, because we are fortunate enough to have him as the Minister's liaison officer in our area. I know the keen work which he has done in his job. I am speaking as one who has been through the mill for the last two years in our very difficult area, over which the whole of the Battle of Britain was fought—and during that battle the farmer did not stop. I am not so concerned with the war agricultural committees, as to whether they are or are not efficient, whether they are courageous, whether they are backsliders, or what they may be. The people who really matter are the farmers themselves, and, with the exception of perhaps 5 per cent. of their number, I cannot possibly pay a high enough tribute to the farmers in my county. The amount of work which they have done has been extraordinary. I have had between one and two hundred farmers working for me. They do not stop on Sundays; they are not paid for it, and a great many of them are almost neglecting their own businesses to help others. I hope that the country is beginning to realise what they are doing.

There are still two things which have to be done. We arc talking about the progress of the food production campaign, and that means what is going to happen in the future, and not what has happened in the past. In spite of tripartite agreements by political Parties, the farmer is still not confident that he will not once again be let down by the politicians. I know that it has been announced that there is to be a long-term policy, and that agriculture will be looked after; but if you want to get the best men to produce all that they can, you will have somehow or other to give them the confidence that they need.

The other matter is the old, old story of cash. I do not know whether we are allowed to talk about money in your Lordships' House, but I should like to emphasize even now the importance of putting the Excess Profits Tax on farm land on a more sensible basis. At least seven years, and probably ten, should be the profit standard. Only yesterday I came across the case of a farmer who is fighting for his country in Malta, and whose wife, a most gallant woman, is carrying on with outside help. For five successive years there has been a loss on this farm, but now the farmer, or those who have helped him, has made a profit of £3,500. The whole of that should go back into the land; but. instead of that, £2,500 will go in Excess Profits Tax. One of the reasons for the present deplorable state of affairs is that for many years no one has put money back into the land, and every law which has been passed has taken money out of the land. If it is possible to get the Excess Profits Tax altered, not only will it help the fertility of the land, but it will encourage the big farmers to expand. At present they have reached the limit, and they ask: "Why should I risk any more?" There are farmers who have taken on five or six hundred acres for me, and who are perhaps farming two thousand acres now, knowing that, if they make a profit, they will not see a halfpenny of it, but that if they make a loss they will have to stand it themselves.

I wish that my noble friend Lord Woolton were here, because I want to say that it is not the slightest good the Ministry of Food fixing prices before it is known what the crop will be. There has been a great deal of talk about fixing prices, and I believe that there has been a deputation to-day about fixing the price of fruit. In certain areas of Kent the fruit has been obliterated in the last fortnight, and it is no use fixing prices for a whole crop when only a quarter crop will be available. It will cost the farmers almost as much to produce a quarter crop as it would have cost them to produce a full crop, and they will not obtain anything like the return which they need. We need all the fruit that we can get, of every kind, and if prices below the 1939 level are to be fixed the fruit will not be picked.

I was not here in time to hear more than the end of the speech of the noble Earl who initiated this debate, but I have a feeling that he spoke about derelict land. It is sad for me to have to speak about "the Garden of England," a county that I love, and to tell you that I have had to take over 106 different holdings, comprising eight or nine thousand acres of utterly derelict land. A great deal of it consists of speculative building sites. I do hope that any future Government will insist on the responsibility of the ownership of land. The old landlords had it. Why should a speculative builder be allowed to buy valuable agricultural land, on which he never ought to be allowed to come at all, and then let it go derelict? What is happening now is that the war agricultural committees have to reclaim and clean that land at a quite uneconomic cost, and they are not allowed to charge betterment at the end of the war, because it was not an agricultural holding. That is a question which should be looked into. The trouble does not arise in every case, because in my area there are two building companies, one of which has realised the position, and is farming 5,000 acres magnificently; but that is not the general experience, and as a rule we are asked to do the work with the money of the taxpayers.

Then there is the question of labour. I should like to reassure my noble friend Lord Bledisloe on the question of the Women's Land Army. We have already three hostels, and we guarantee to keep one hundred women on our committee farms as a training centre and pool for farmers. There are not, however, as; many men on the land in Kent at this moment as there were at the beginning of the war, and we have 100,000 extra acres of arable land. That is the position which I want the Government thoroughly to understand. I could to-morrow put 500 men on drainage operations alone in the Weald of Kent, and possibly bring 10,000 acres back into real fertility—if I could get the men. It is a big question. Every day our Special Releases Committee deals with between 100 and 200 cases, and we are not allowed to transfer anyone under the age of twenty-five to another farm. It is only on the good farms that one or two men can be released, and they would not be on those farms unless they were good men. We then go to a bad farm, which has perhaps three men and 200 acres, and we have to leave the men there, because they cannot be spared. The result is that we send the good agriculturists into the Forces and keep the bad ones on the farm, because we are not allowed to transfer people who are under twenty-five years of age. I do not know whether anything can be done to deal with that.

I may be regarded as a dreadful heretic, but I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, in not putting the slightest value on quotas. What we have to do is to get the utmost that we can, whether in the form of grazing or of arable, out of the land at this moment. I hope the Government will realize that possibly we are getting near the end of human endeavour in the amount of arable acreage that we can control. I would ask them to concentrate more and more on doubling and trebling the crops on the arable land that we already have, because I am certain that that is where we can get the extra yield.

I am afraid it will be thought that I have been very pessimistic, but I should like to say that, however good, bad or indifferent war agricultural committees may have been, I am certain that as a whole an immense amount of good has been done. The education which has been given not only by the Ministry but by these agricultural committees, and above all by the farmers themselves, has-been most valuable. They have brought about a neighbourliness between the big and the small farmer that one would have thought quite impossible before the war, and I know of dozens, and almost hundreds, of cases where the big farmers have helped the small ones and have not asked for any money for it. An enormous amount of solid work of instruction and understanding is being put into the land, and into the smaller men on the land, and from that wonderful spirit of the helping hand, and from a realisation at last that agriculture is the first, and always should be the foremost, industry in the country, I hope there may come some real agricultural policy. I do not mind which form it takes, as long as the land produces the food which the nation requires, not only now but always, and as long as people can find a happy and contented living on land of which they can be proud.

LORD ADDISON

My Lords, I am sure every one of us must have been encouraged and inspired by the speech which has just been made. It prompts me at the beginning to say that there was only one sentence in the speech of the noble Earl who opened the debate with which I did not find myself in agreement. He said, speaking of the necessity for the formulation of a permanent policy for agriculture, that we have got to win the war first, or words to that effect. The speech to which we have just listened should convince us that there is no necessity to wait until we have won the war. We must get on with policy now. When we are confronted, as we are, in every county and on every farm, with the results of grievous neglect in the past, when we are daily made more conscious of our errors and neglect, now is the time to frame our resolves in a practical fashion.

EARL DE LA WARR

. As this has been referred to before, may I just say that what I said was that I did not think this debate was the moment? I did not in the least mean to say we should not be turning the subject over in our minds now. Indeed my subsequent remarks were all the other way.

LORD ADDISON

I am exceedingly glad the noble Earl has said that, and am only too glad to be corrected. He knows I did not want to misrepresent him. Now we are in complete agreement. One of the most notable features of the debate which he inaugurated with such a valuable speech may be, as Lord Brocket also hoped, that it will concentrate attention, even resolve, upon the necessity to make progress with the formulation of some kind of agreed policy for the post-war period. I am quite sure that what the noble Lord said a moment ago about farmers feeling they were let down after the last war has been a very serious obstacle indeed to county war agricultural executive committees. The farmers were let down. It is a true bill, and it is quite clear we cannot afford to repeat that disaster. Therefore, it is all to the good that we should get together now and see what can be done. For my part I do not believe it is impossible—I do not think it would be even very difficult—to frame a policy now, when we are actually confronted with realities and needs, that will command all-round agreement and that could be adopted as a national policy for a long term of years. That is absolutely essential if we are going to use the land profitably.

I shall not attempt at this stage to deal at any length with all the very important topics raised by the noble Earl at the beginning. Perhaps I may refer in passing to two or three. First, let me deal with the observation made by the noble Viscount opposite (Viscount Bledisloe) as to the lack of advisers. He was doing, to some extent—unconsciously, of course—an injustice to the present organisation. The Ministry has, as I know, advisers. I believe, as a matter of fact, the man who was very largely responsible for developing the Strutt estate is among them, and there are liaison officers from the different colleges. As most of us who are in living, daily touch with the work of the. agricultural executive committees know, the demand for the services of skilled advisers is so great that the few there are will not go round. What we are suffering from is that, owing to neglect of the industry during the "last generation, the number of young men who have been trained, and who have been able to put their very best into the application of agricultural knowledge, is entirely insufficient.

VISCOUNT BLEDISLOE

Is it quite necessary that the expert adviser should be such a very young man?

LORD ADDISON

For my part I do not think so a bit. The experienced farmer who commands the confidence of his fellow farmers, as the noble Viscount said, is of course immensely valuable. You cannot over-estimate his value; but it is the fact, nevertheless, as all the records show, that owing to the neglect of national policy for twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty years, the industry as a whole has been starved intellectually, and the bright young men have gone elsewhere. We know there are brilliant exceptions, but in the main that is true. It accounts for the fact that every one of us is clamouring for good advisers at the same time, and there are not enough good advisers to go round. If anybody can put the little committee with which I am connected in touch with half-a-dozen good men, we should be happy to seize on them to-morrow. That is another of the consequences of past neglect.

Perhaps I might refer to one or two points which the noble Lord stressed. It is a mistake to concentrate too much on the mere ploughing up of additional acres. If there is one thing that the survey shows, so far as I know, more than anything else, it is the appalling extent of indifferent farming. The classifications of the farms are made, generally, by experienced farmers in the district itself. They are the judges of their own case for the most part, and the records show that the percentage of Class A, good farms, is painfully small and the percentage of Class B, moderate or indifferent farms, is painfully large. Even Class C is very big. These are classifications made by farmers themselves, and they are correct classifications. In other words, the big problem that is presented to us is to get the best production out of the land, and we are confronted with the difficulty that there is this great extent of indifferently farmed, and relatively fertile, land that has been neglected. We are trying, as the noble Earl said, to overcome in a couple of years the results of the neglect of a couple of generations, and we cannot do it.

I do hope that what has been said here to-day will bring out, ever more clearly than perhaps it has been brought out before, the necessity of concentrating our efforts, apart from the mere ploughing up of x acres, on getting the best production from the land already under cultivation. We cannot pay too high a tribute to the work of the agricultural experts and the members of the district committees in trying to help and lift up the standard of farming of their neighbours and many others. We cannot do the impossible in a few months, but I am quite sure that we shall not get the maximum food production this year or next year unless we keep in our minds the improvement of the standard of cultivation of the bulk of the land, whether it is now ploughed or not. In that connection I should like to support what the noble Lord said on the question of labour. What he said is mathematically correct; indeed I think it is an understatement. As a matter of fact, the amount of land we are bringing under the plough is a wonderful achievement, and what has been done in the last two years reflects immense credit upon the Ministry and more particularly upon the farmers. We have brought nearly 4,000,000 acres under the plough, but however much you use your implements, still more labour is required than was needed by the same amount of grass. However much you economise by the use of tractors and the formation of co-operative cultivating schemes, still more labour is required, and for my part I should like to support what the noble Lord said in this respect.

I am sure that this industry is the last to want to get out of its military obligations. It is not a question of getting out of its military obligations at all. We are all well acquainted with vast numbers of men who are now in uniform of one sort or another whom we think, or I certainly think, would be better employed on the land, and would be doing more for their country than they are now doing. It is a fact that this increased extent of arable land will require more labour. If you ask a manufacturer of shells to produce 10,000 or 100,000 more shells a month you expect him to employ more labour. You do not ask him to increase his output of shells and diminish his employment; and you cannot increase output and diminish labour in agriculture any more than you can in other industries.

Whilst nobody wants to excuse a man who wishes to shirk—I have not found any shirkers myself—it is a solid fact that what agriculture wants is a great deal more labour. It cannot afford to lose any man who is rendering an instructive service to agriculture—at least that is my view—and in particular with respect to drainage. Everything that has been said on that subject is, I might almost say, commonplace, but we have to keep reiterating. I do not know how we are to measure the miles of farm ditches that require cleaning out. There will be tens of thousands of them; I am not sure there will not be hundreds of thousands of miles. I know of one small district in one county in which there is, as the survey shows, 12,000 miles of farm ditches that need to be cleaned out. What it is for the country as a whole one shivers to think. Still it is a fact that many, many thousands of acres of land cannot profitably be scheduled for ploughing because they are waterlogged, and you must clean the farm ditches out, if you do no more, before that land can be properly used.

I am thankful to say that the Ministry are becoming more and more ambitious, and it has given me pleasure to see that they are prepared more and more to do things in the way of helping farmers with machinery. They expect farmers to engage in enterprises on a larger and larger scale, and I am delighted that that is so, but we cannot ask the county war agricultural committees to act as labour exchanges. They would be glad of the labour, but it is not their function to find it. I think myself that the time is scon coming—indeed I think it is now here—when we shall need a concentrated national effort to provide a large amount of additional labour to drain land. There is no time to spare. I think it might easily be the case that not one thousand men but ten thousand or twenty thousand men might well be employed in this work between now and next September, and it would pay us next harvest time if that were done. An immense provision of additional labour is required, and I believe that what is wanted is a more concentrated central effort than we have yet had.

May I support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bingley, with respect to policy? He said that he found a number of market gardeners and others who were discouraged. I did not know they were being called up, and I cannot imagine why, because they are producing, I think, more food per acre than any other cultivator. But apart from that, Lord Bledisloe's point is a sound one—I think it was his—that we should look for a Ministry of Agriculture and Food, because it is a fact that large numbers of men up and down the country cannot put their best into market gardening work because they cannot sell the produce. I know, for example, one case where a man with a charming country house and three acres of garden let the garden rent free to a most experienced and industrious gardener, and after three years of effort he has given it up this year because he found he could not sell the produce. I hope that one of the results of this debate may be to impress upon the Minister of Food that he should get together with the Minister of Agriculture and recognise that marketing and distribution are inalienably associated with the development of the industry. You cannot separate them. I hope sincerely that this subdivision will before long have ceased. The production and distribution of rood are all one thing from the point of view of the public need.

Many other points have been raised, but I will refer to one only in conclusion, and that is that a large amount of land suffers, as we know, from defective farm equipment. It takes a long time to provide effective farm equipment. The decline in farm equipment has been the result of our neglect of agricultural policy. There are certain branches of farm equipment that require to be dealt with. The provision of adequate roads, the cleaning of ditches, the improvement of pastures, and the provision of help with fertilizers after the custom of the old landlords are things of immediate importance. I know very well that we cannot ask the Minister to contemplate embarking on big-scale expenditure on improved farm equipment, but there are, apart from drainage, many branches of farm equipment which are essential. If we are to look forward to two or three years more of war, it is necessary that they should be surveyed and undertaken quickly. Unless we do that we shall not be able to bring more land into better cultivation next year. That is why I have indicated the need of a survey, not only of the condition of the farms, but of the need of farms in terms of equipment that would be likely to lead to a good return. Therefore, my Lords, I am glad to feel that apart from calling attention to what has been done already and to the needs of the present situation, the noble Earl who initiated this debate recognises, as we all do, that the time is opportune—indeed it is pressing—for men of good will of all Parties to gel together to see that this discreditable state of affairs of the first industry of the country is not allowed to recur.

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (THE DUKE OF NORFOLK)

My Lords, I would like first of all to thank my noble friend Earl De La Warr who introduced this debate for the manner in which he did so. I feel it is only right that so vital a need of our country should be discussed at the present moment in your Lordships' House. When I realise the experience and the knowledge which so many of your Lordships have on the subject of agriculture it is with some diffidence that I face the task which lies ahead. When discussing how far we have gone in the production of food, I feel that we must compare the position with where we were two years ago, in 1939 The acreage of cultivated land had dwindled, as your Lordships know, since the end of the first Great War. If I may repeat a figure mentioned in another place by my right honourable friend, for every thousand acres of cultivated land in the last war, there were 1,195 people and in 1940 for every thousand acres there were 1,521 people, an increase of over 25 per cent. The average per year of over 6,000,000 tons of imported feeding-stuffs had a very serious effect on the art of balanced farming. Over and above that, we have lost some 2,500,000 acres of land through buildings, the making of roads, and aerodromes. That was roughly the situation in 1939. We had more people per acre to feed and fewer acres to cultivate.

When war broke out the organisation which now exists had already been set up—that is, the major policy to be directed from Whitehall and the detailed instructions to be in the hands of the local farmers. The programme for the first year was a policy of ploughing up a further 2,000,000 acres, and in spite of a very severe winter, which no doubt your Lordships will all remember, followed by drought last summer, that object was achieved. I think that is a matter of congratulation for the farmers. In 1940, a year in which the disasters of the war became apparent, we found ourselves alone, not only to fight but also with less shipping space to feed ourselves. With the enemy threatening our life line in the Atlantic it became apparent in the middle of last year that more shipping space must be used for the transport of munitions and less for feeding-stuffs. Therefore, an ever-increasing drive had to be made to produce food from our own country. Lost fertility in the soil had again to be found, and a great deal of encouragement had to be given to the growing of dual-purpose crops. Milk, which had always held pride of place in this country and to which the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, referred in his speech, has been placed at the top of the priority list. It is only right that so far as is possible the output of milk should be maintained.

The aims of the 1940–41 campaign can be summarised under three headings: First, a total of 3,750,000 acres to be ploughed up by the spring, an increase of 40 per cent. since before the war; secondly, increased productivity of both existing and arable grassland; thirdly, raising of general farming efficiency. It is gratifying to know that we have achieved the first of these three objects and are making favourable progress with the other two. And now I turn to the situation at the present period. A further increase in the ploughing up of land will be made during the coming year 1941–42. A large area of land is being dealt with by the county war agricultural executive committees themselves. Between 100,000 and 150,000 acres of derelict or semi-derelict land has been brought under cultivation, but, as has been stressed many times in this debate, all work such as this depends on labour and machinery. It would be idle to suggest that the question of labour is as satisfactory as it might be. It is a source of worry not only to the farmer but also to the officials of my Department and the Ministry of Labour. The Government have the matter under constant review and fully appreciate how vital the question of labour is to the production of food. We began this war with a smaller labour force than in 1914. Part of this has been made good by the increase in machinery, but more labour is needed both on the individual farms and for various schemes of drainage, reclamation and other work. It has been said, and I am sure that the farmers themselves will agree, that a large proportion of the armed forces must be provided by those who work on the land. With the least disturbance therefore of the production of food a certain number of men will have to be taken from their present jobs.

With regard to gang labour, I have listened with interest to the proposal of the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, that agriculture should have a large pool of labour at its disposal. This has, in fact, been our objective for some months. We have about 3,000 civilian workers employed to-day. We have 3,000 Pioneers by arrangement with the War Office, who are at the temporary disposal of the executive committees. It is hoped that about 10,000 will become available in the next few months for agricultural labour gangs, from men now being required to register for employment, and from men being dereserved as a result of the new Schedule of Reserved Occupations. The Ministry of Works and Buildings have agreed to find accommodation for all these gangs in suitable camps throughout the country. When the prisoners of war—of whom I can only say. I suppose, that we hope to have numbers of them in the very near future—are available, they will be accommodated in large camps. For obvious reasons they will have to be provided with armed guards, and for further reasons there are only certain areas in this country in which they will be allowed to operate. But we hope, by the late autumn, to have increased cur labour gangs from some 6,000, as they are to-day, to 15,000 people. The harvest will need a large number of people, and every possible source is being actively approached with a view to finding them at this moment. Schools have arranged to stagger their holidays as they did in the summer of last year. The universities have undertaken to find volunteers from among the undergraduates, and over and above all this, we have, as you all know, the Women's Land Army This numbers over 11,000 to-day and there are a further 1,100 trainees at the various camps.

A brief word about machinery. We have to-day nearly 90,000 tractors available. This is an increase of some sixty to seventy per cent. on what we had just before the war. The implements are coming along in increasing numbers, the increase in some cases being 100 per cent. To make sure that all machinery is in permanent use, we do need rather more co-operation among certain farmers who could work in together and make further use of what is available. I now turn to drainage. There is still much work to be done in this respect and the Pioneer Corps is helping to a large extent, while training schools have been set up where the use of the new excavators and ditching implements is being taught. The trainees, when proficient, are sent to various areas where they in turn train more people. If it would interest your Lordships to know the progress that has been made on drainage, I will give you the figures for the various schemes as they are to-day; that is, figures for what has been done on drainage carried out on special war-time legislation alone. Taking first the county war agricultural executive committees schemes, there are farm ditches for 14,000 schemes affecting 600,000 acres. In the matter of mole drainage, there are 3,500 schemes affecting 90,000 acres; and in tile drainage, 4,600 schemes affecting 40,000 acres. Under the Agriculture (Miscellaneous War Provisions) Act, 1940, there were sixty-eight schemes affecting 60,000 acres and minor watercourses. The importance of land drainage I need not stress before your Lordships as you all know the very great need that there is for it in this country. As I think the noble Viscount mentioned, the waterlogged state of some areas was becoming a menace.

Turning to the subject of fertilizers, we have in the season which is just ending, increased the supply of nitrogenous fertilizers by more than half as much again compared with pre-war quantities and phosphatic fertilizers have increased by more than one-third. In the season of 1941–42 it is hoped to produce sufficient nitrogenous fertilizers to meet the demands. Potash will not be in any greater supply than in 1940 or 1941. The position of phosphates clearly depends upon the shipping situation, but our programme provides for an increase on last year. The question of lime, which has already been raised in the debate, is one which is always under difficulties in certain parts of the country owing to transport and labour problems. But every possible avenue is being explored in the hope of opening more of these lime kilns to produce the amount necessary with a view to improving the position in the difficult areas where, as we know, supplies have been so short.

Few of us would disagree with the noble Earl who moved this Motion as regards the importance of ley farming or, as perhaps it has been better called, "alternate husbandry. '"The utilisation of the stored-up fertility of our grassland for the purpose of growing human foodstuffs must necessarily represent the principal means of increased production in war-time, but simultaneously with this we all know there must be a certain number of fields where fertility has to be restored by a means of a short ley. There are also some cases where direct reseeding to grass is the only means of grassland improvement. The committees have full responsibility in all these matters. We have all heard of taking the plough round the farm. There can be little doubt, as the Minister of Agriculture has already said, that we must aim at taking the plough round England—a process likely to be beneficial whether in war or in peace.

The noble Earl stressed the desirability of setting up an ad hoc body for reclaiming all derelict land, and here I am afraid that my noble friend and I are going to disagree. I feel very strongly that it would tend to do more harm than good. I say so because, whereas if such a body were set up it would have to be run by the Ministry, the local committees would still have to be entertained, and therefore another body must be set up in each county or wherever such a task of reclamation was being undertaken. I can only suggest that when the local county committee wanted the machinery or the labour in the various gangs and the ad hoc body wanted it too, friction might be caused. Furthermore, I hope, as we all hope, that every person who would be capable of carrying out this work is already being employed by the county committees.

And now, my Lords, a few words on the live-stock policy, which, so far as I can see, is now governed by two main considerations. The first is the much reduced supply of feeding-stuffs and of fodder, including grazing, lost in consequence of the heavy reduction in imports of feeding-stuffs and in the utilisation of a far larger area of land to produce crops for direct human consumption. The second is the need to secure the maximum possible output of milk and meat from our farms, consistent with the limited supplies of feed. It struck me this afternoon that some people, rightly or possibly wrongly, have rather too drastic an idea of the possible destruction of a large amount of live stock, and I do not think it is at all the Government's idea; in fact I can say it is quite the opposite: that obviously as many live stock as can be fed must be kept. As the noble Earl himself said, we have a great many rather useless and bad animals which are possibly a discredit rather than a credit to some of the herds in the country. I feel that we ought to be able to keep some 75 per cent. of the live stock as it is to-day.

The noble Lord, Lord Brocket, has actually left, so that will save me having to deal with post-war policy which, I can assure him and the rest of your Lordships who mentioned it, is always a matter under consideration with the Ministry. I feel that there is nobody who does not agree that a policy for lasting success to agriculture is most necessary as soon as the moment has arrived to discuss it.

I would like to say a few words about the county war agricultural committees. I have been to certain counties during the last few weeks, and I am convinced that they are doing a really great work. They are giving endless hours of their own time as well as other people's time. They are supported by farmers on the district and other committees, and they tackle this great task with keenness in spite of the ever-added paper which arrives from a certain building in London. In addition to that I may mention the great feeling that exists between the farmers themselves in practically every county in the country. There are a few always out of line, but they are a very small number, and I feel that the farm labourer himself is more than pulling his weight. It is in fact quite true to say that from dawn till dusk the work goes on. The tact and patience which have been shown by both sides are certainly showing their value, and the great machinery of production over which the Ministry watch, and for which I now have the honour to speak, is coming into full stride.

I do not think it would be right for me to sit down without saying that I was a little surprised that the noble Viscount should have mentioned the word "complacency." I do not feel that any of your Lordships who have seen the position in the various counties or anything connected with the Ministry would be either satisfied with what has been done or with what we are going to do. Nothing is perfect and we know it; but we are quite certain, and I am quite certain, that there is no sacrifice that the farmers of this country, with a certain amount of encouragement, will not make in this great endeavour to produce the food we need. As we are certain of victory, so I am certain that these farmers will do their share, and that the country will never go short of food.

EARL DE LA WARR

My Lords, in withdrawing my Motion for Papers, I think the whole House would like me to thank the noble Duke for his remarks. I am particularly glad that he mentioned the county war agricultural committees. I do not think that any of us have said quite sufficient about them. The way in which they have carried out their very difficult task is really most remarkable. I hope that you will allow me to add also a tribute to those in the Ministry. He disclaimed strongly the charge of complacency. I have been working with them for some time now and I can most certainly assure your Lordships that they are very far from being a complacent body.

I think we were all pleased to have a certain amount of reassurance from the noble Duke on the subject of labour. However, I still do want to press him, because the figures he gave do not take us anywhere near as far as we have got to go. I worked out that we had a 60,000 requirement, from which we could deduct 11,000 land, girls and a few conscientious objectors and Pioneers. He tells us that they are aiming at 15,000. That is not even a third of what we really want. I know that I need not push this point, because I am pushing at an open door, but I hope he realises that some of us do still intend to go on pushing until that door is even wider open than it is at the moment.

Only one last word, because it is an important point. Both the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, and the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, used certain phrases which I think we want to be quite clear about. The noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, spoke about reaching the end of human endeavour in regard to the management of the arable acreage, and the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, touched on what seemed to me to be very much the same point when he talked about the danger of soil exhaustion. It would be a great pity if it came out of this debate upon the making of those two points that the time had come when we should cease to plough as much as we are doing. There is a danger of soil exhaustion. There is a danger of our reaching the end of human endeavour as regards the amount of arable land. The solution is not to stop ploughing, but to see to it that in future when we schedule land to be ploughed we also schedule land to be sown down. The noble Duke used the phrase "ploughing round the farm." That is the only solution, particularly with some of these dairy farms. We should take the plough round to the farms, plough out a given acreage and undersow it, then pass on to another portion and plough it and undersow it, and so go round the farm. Then they can handle any amount. They are continually producing cereals, and each time they do so they leave behind them a pasture that is going to produce two or three times as much as before. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.