§ Major Carverasked the Minister of Agriculture whether he can state the exact nature of the objection to the proposal that the Government's offer to increase the barley subsidy to £1 an acre should be amended so that, instead of having to choose between deficiency payments under the Wheat Act and the barley subsidy, farmers growing both crops should be entitled to both measures of assistance?
§ Mr. W. S. MorrisonAfter full debate last year, Parliament approved the principle embodied in the Agriculture Act, 1937, that in general reasonable financial assistance would be afforded to cereal cultivation if that assistance were limited to either the wheat crop or the barley and oats crops. The quantitative limit upon which full wheat deficiency payments are made was increased under that Act from 27,000,000 to 36,000,000 cwts., and the wheat grower is guaranteed this year a price approaching 45s. per quarter for the largest crop that he has ever obtained, averaging over 20 cwts. per acre, or a gross return averaging nearly £10 per acre. The sum which Parliament will be asked to make available for emergency assistance to barley growers should, in the opinion of the Government, be concentrated for the benefit of those barley growers who have not grown appreciable quantities of wheat on their land and whose need therefore is greatest.