Fabian Tract No. 228. 


AGRICULTURE AND 
THE LABOUR PARTY. 


BY 

G. T . GARRATT. 
PuBLISHED ANn SoLD BY 

THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 

PRICE T WOPE NCE. 

LONDON: 

THE FABrA:>~ SociETY, u, DARTMOUTH STREP:T, WESTi'diNSTER1 

WNDOK, S.W.I. PUHUSH-ED APRIL, 19~'). 


Agriculture and the Labour Party r: 

By G. T. GARRATT. 

The future of the farming industry presents one of the most 
difficult problems which the Labour I-·arty has to face. Agriculture 
has, for many years, been the " last item on the agenda," 
the hopeless subject which no Cabinet dares to tackle. On the 
other hand many optimistic theories about farming in England 
are widely accepted in the Labour movement, while the land question 
has been so mangled by rival protagonists that it is difficult 
to get any countryman •to take it seriously., It is easy to 
exaggerate the importance of land in English farming. The 
industry is chiefly engaged in turning uneatables into eatables, 
and reducing bulky food-stuffs, cereals and vegetables, into more 
concentrated forms. In these operations either land or animals 
can be used. A dairy farmer has frequently to decide whether 
he \\·ill spend £12 on four tons of basic slag for his pastures, or 
one ton of dairy cake for his cows. Both slag and cake are 
uneatable by-products to be converted into milk, but in one case 
the farmer uses both land and cows, in the other his stock only. 
It will be seen in a later section that the tendency in England is 
to use the land less, and to rely chiefly on stock, fed upon purchased 
food-stuffs. In farming parlance the land is used to 
provide bulky " roughage " for the stock, but the " concentrates 
'' are imported. 

It is best to look upon land part!y as a machine, partly as a 
reserve of potential feeding stuffs. In the old and much worked 
lands of Europe and India the first aspect is of chief importance, 
and land is reckoned good or bad according to the ease with 
which it can be cultivated, and its retentiveness of the manures 
which are added to it. On virgin lands the second aspect is the 
most important, for these are so rich in humus that crops can be 
taken from them for two generations without any replenishing. 
The exploitation of such lands must be more profitable than the 
cultivation of old land, the soil deficiencies of which have to be 
supplied. One hears too frequently such remarks as '' \Vhy 
should our young men go to work in Canada when there is as 
good land at their own door?" The movement from old land 
to new has been g-oing on for centuries. It can be seen in 
America to-day. The " Middle West " '"as typical virgin land 
which brought the first exploiters considerable prosperity. It is 
now almost worked out, and the old farming families are either 
migrating or being forced into " conservative " farming, the 


4 

European farming which is based on retuming to the soil each 
year some of the constituents which have been removed by the 
last crop. Such farming is, in every country, very unremunera-
tive compared with industry, and the latter, in America as in 

'England, tends to drain from the former all the most active and 
enterprising men. 

There is no real virgin land in England, and our land must 
usually be classed according to its efficiency as a medium of 
cultivation, or the ease with which it can be made to grow the 
valuable gra ses. l t may be too heavy to be handled easily, like 
our boulder clay, or too light to be retcnti\·c of manure, like the 
sandy soils which are to be found in certain Eastern counties, and 
which are so characteristic of North Europe. The amount of 
really good land, retentive but easy to work, is very limited. One 
recent development must be remembered. Modern economic 
changes are helping the light lands against the " strong " lands . 

. ( 

Manures keep their price or become cheaper. Labour grows 
more expensive. Soils which are wasteful of manure arc, therefore, 
relatively more profitable than those which require an 
excessive amount of labour. It is the heavy intractable clays which 
are going down to grass. The lighter lands are holding their 
own. In the W est of England the difficulties of managing clay 
land are increased by the heavy rainfall and lack of winter frosts. 

The position to-day is that five of our thirty million acres of 
agricultural land are classed as " rough grazing." Of the 

·.remainder some two-fifths arc under arable cultivation. About 
a million acres arc used for fruit, potatoes, and market garden 
crops. Two and a half million are under wheat and barley, the 
remaining arable land being used for crops which fit in with our 
" mixed " farming system, and are mostly used for feeding 
stock. Nearly all our land is in the hands of small scale producers, 
providing their own capital, and employing-little labour. 
Arable farming has not proved sufficiently attractive to encourage 
the speculative capitalist, and only a small proportion of our 
:nixed farming is undertaken by companies working on a lar~e 
scale. The few exceptic:>ns are usually retail dairy companies, and 
the co-operative societies, but the latter have not f ouncl the 
busines profitable, and arc tending to give up their farms. The 
:100,000 men who call themselves farmers and graziers only employ 
~ome 670,000 men and boys, and even this latter figure is deceptive, 
for the proportion of lads under 21 is fifty per cent. higher 
than in industry generally. The regular workers, over 21 ycat·s 
old, only numbered 452,900 in 1921. The wage-earners in the 
farming industr.y arc decreasing, the men who are their owu 
mastet·s seem to be incre11sing very !ilowly. Probably under fi\'8 
per cent. of our farmers now employ as man) as ten men. 


This exceedingly complex small-scale industry does not appeal 
to any except the most doctrinaire as a suitable subject for 
nation~lisation. It would also appear that agriculture, unlike most' 
other mdustries, does not lend itself to mass production except 
on prairie land or for beet growing. " Conservative " farming 
seems to be a small scale occupation. All serious political opinion 
is, therefore, in favour of modifying rather than replacing the 
existing organisation of English farming, based on the medium 
sized mixed farm. It will be best to consider separately the three 
sides of the industry: (1) The land and the landlord's responsibilities; 
(2) The farm and the tenant's responsibilities; (3) The 
marketing of farm products. 

1. Land and Buildings. 
The typical English farm is owned by a private individual, and 
leased to a farmer. About three-quarters of the thirty million 
acres used for agriculture are held under this tenure. Of the 
remainder some six million acres are occupied and worked by 
their owners. Though the owner-occupier is rapidly becoming 
a common farming type-the number of such holdings and their 
area doubled between 1919 and 1924-the change is often one of 
name only. :\Iost of the new tenants are old tenant-farmers who 
have been forced to buy their holdings on the breaking up of large 
estates. In nearly every case a heavy mortgage was raised in 
order to purchase, so that these farmers have really got " a bank 
for their landlord," and in many cases, owing to the fall in the 
price of agricultural land, the mortgage now exceeds the value 
of the farm. 

More than a million acres of agricultural land are in the hands 
of public or semi-public bodies. The County Councils administer 
a little less than half a million under the Small Holdings Acts. 
The Ecclesiastical Commissioners own a quarter of a million acres, 
and the Universities an even larger area. Crown lands and the 
Duchy of Cornwall cover an area of nearly half a million acres, 
but much of this is woodland and waste. 

The landlord's responsibilities include all permanent buildings, 
the farmhouse, homesteads, and cottages, drainage, roads, gates, 
etc. In most parts of England the landlord seldom advances 
money to his tenants for the purchase of '' live and dead stock,'' 
nor is this ever considered to be his duty. Farming capital and 
landlord's capital are quite separate things. It is the latter which 
is being considered, and there is little doubt that in this respect 
English farms are badly equipped compared with those of most 
Western European countries, and that at present the position is 
getting \\'Orse rather than better. The best buildings are to be 


•• r. 

6 

found on a few large estates, where the owner is a wealthy man 
who looks upon his land as a hobby, and on farms which have been 
purchased by men who bought willingly, and have more capital 
than the size of the farm requires. Public bodies are usually better 
landlords than private. Their administration is niore businesslike, 
and they are more consistent and generous in their estate management, 
partly because they are not mulcted for death duties. On 
the whole, however, the work is badly done, and in England an 
estate is considered to be well run if it is not actually deteriorating. 
Farm buildings are usually worse than farmhouses. ~any of 
the former were planned when ideas of animal hygiene, labour 
saving, the conservation of farm-yard manure, and the production 
of clean milk were all totally different to those held to-day. In 
most cases the general " lay-out " is wrong, and many were 
planned when threshing was still done by hand. Farm drainage 
is also very much neglected. Pipe draining now costs about £10 an 
acre, which is the actual price of poor arable land in the Eastern 
counties. The work is therefore so uneconomic that little except 
mole draining has been done for many years, and the old pipe 
systems lie in the ground, blocked up and useless. Landlords 
are even more loath to build farm workers' houses than they are 
to indulge in drainage schemes. Even as '' tied houses '' these 
cottages are hopelessly uneconomic to build, and the whole system 
being open to obvious objections, the future of such houses is 
uncertain. 

The position, then, would seem to be that the landlord's side 
of farming is everywhere neglected, except on a few estates where 
good work is done on a basis which is not really economic. The 
three great needs are for new farm buildings, better drainage, and 
more houses for wage-earners, and in some areas houses and 
homesteads for small-holders. For economic reasons private 
landlords, even when farming their own land, are unlikely to spend 
money on such enterprises, nor can they borrow money for the 
purpose. It is a form of investment which no solicitor would 
encourage, an important point, because vast areas are actually 
held under trusts. The substitution of public bodies for private 
landlords is, therefore, the only possible solution. The position 
was stated very clearly by Lord Irwin, the former Minister of 
Agriculture, in 1924::


" Any of us who are accustomed to Jive in the country, who 
watch the process going on, see to-day a deterioration in what 
I may call the capital equipment of the land and soil, whether 
in buildings or in draina-ge .... This means either that the soil 
is going to be starved, and is gradually going to lose some of 
its fecundity by the land becoming waterlogged, and so on; 


7 


or the nation is going to say: ' We cannot watch this process 
going on,' and the State will come in to fill the function of 
the old landlord by lending capital. When it does that you 
may depend upon it that it will claim some measure of control 
in the business that it finances, and so you may well find yourself 
within measurable distance of something like nationalisation 
by a side wind.'' 

The present Conservative Government, with its enormous 
majority, and its control over the House of Lords, might easily 
have effected this transfer under conditions very favourable to 
the landlords. It has, however, contented itself ~ith two 
palliatives, the Rural Housing Act, and the Agricultural Credits 
Act, which are about as effective in preventing deterioration as 
is the Lord Mayor's Fund to settle the problem of unemployment 
in the mining industry. It will be therefore left to the Labour 
Party to carry through the transference, and no one who has 
ever arranged for the Government acquisition of land is likely 
to underrate the complexity of the problem. It will have to be 
faced, and all that it is necessary to state here about the method 
to be employed is that compensation will be paid to the dispossessed 
landlords on the basis of the existing cc Schedule A " 
assessment, and will be paid in the form of transferable land bonds 
bearing fixed interest. Normally the land which is farmed by 
its owner will not be affected, unless the owners themselves would 
pre_fer their farms to be taken over. This would happen frequently, 
as many owner occupiers are at their wits' end to find capital 
for carrying on their farming, and would gladly sell their farms 
if a sale cc without possession " in the open market did not mean 
a very heavy loss. 

The administration of the newly-acquired land would be in the 
hands of County Committees not unlike those already administer-
in the considerable estates acquired under the Small Holdings 
Act, e.g., areas of over 26,000 acres in both Norfolk and Suffolk, 
and of oYer 18,000 in Cambridgeshire. The Committees would 
need to be strengthened, made more democratic, and brought 
into closer touch with the Ministry of Agriculture. 

The transfer "would have many direct and indirect advantages. 

(l) The State would be a sisted in the constructive mapping 
out of the whole country, in afforestation schemes, land settlement 
on suitable soils; and the preservation of natural beauty 
spots. 
(2) Public bodies, with their power to raise loans, would be 
able to undertake the rebuilding of homesteads, and the provision 
of houses. Any drainage schemes would be immensely assisted 
by having all land under one control. At present those few 

8 

landlords and owner occupiers who \\>ant to drain their land are 
often discouraged by the difficulty of getting ""ater away owing 
to the state of their neighbours' ditches. 

{3) A unified authority would lead to the levelling up of the 
industry. Farmers would no longer have to study the 
idiosyncrasies of their landlords, and the farmer \\>ho habitually 
starves his land would not be able to move from one farm to 
another. The industry as a whole would gain by the readjustment 
of farm boundaries, and the single authority would be in a 
very favourable position to inaugurate and support schemes of 
co-operatiYe enterprise amongst their tenants. 

{4) A single authority would lead to great economy of management. 
Much of what is now called " land agent's vvork " is 
carried out expensively and inefficiently by private firms, college 
bursars, solicitors, and others, who often live some way from the 
estate. Ultimately the industry has to bear the cost of management, 
as well as the heavy legal expenses whenever the smalle~t 
piece of land is transferred. A comparatively small increase in 
the staff of the County Agricultural Officer would enable him to 
extend his activities to the whole of the agricultural land. In 
most cases the existing leases wiould be continued, and the 
amount of administrative work would be small. 

(5) Similar economy would be effected in the matter of 
repairs. On large estates there are usually estate carpenters, on 
tne smaller ones the repairs are " jobbed " out to local firms. 
On an estate which included all the agricultural land in a county 
a few specialist employees would do the necessary maintenance 
\\>Ork much better and cheaper than under the present haphazard 
system. 
(6) Land, once under the administration of the County Council, 
is saved for ever from the clutches of the land speculator. This 
would prevent the worst kind of speculative building, and the 
holding up of land with a potential building site value. It would 
also make it easier to choose and obtain the best site for schools, 
playing fields, etc. 
(7) In various subtle ways the change would improve the 
status of farming. Blackacre would be primarily a farm, and not 
merely an outlying portion of a " desirable residential and sporting 
estate.'' Giles, an excellent farmer, but intolerably cantankerous 
when the hunt rides over his winter corn, would not have the 
same difficulty in renewing his lease. The patriarchal system has 
had its day. It had some advantages, but led to many abuses. 
It must go. 

9 

The chief opposition to the transfer of agricultural land is 
due to the confusion, assiduously encouraged by Conservative 
politicians, between the nationalisation of land and of farming. 
There are many practical objections to any large scale incursion 
of the State into the farming industry, and no such development is 
intended. A more serious argument against the Labour Party's 
proposals is likely to be brought forward in counties where there 
are large estates under Council management. It will be suggested 
that transfer to the State is responsible for the high rents charged 
for small holdings. This charge must be met by describing the 
actual financial transactions involved when the estates were taken 
over. The land was bought at an inflated price, usually at somewhere 
between forty and fifty years' 'purchase. The State charges 
six per cent. on the capital cost, and tenants also pay an addition 
for amortisation, a ludicrously unfair charge, as the land does not 
fall in to them. These charges raise the rent of land, which was 
formerly paying .£1 an acre, up to £2 10s. Od. or £3. This weakness 
would not apply to the Labour Party's proposals, but it must 
also be remembered that any scheme of breaking up a large farm 
into small ones, if the latter are to be provided with homesteads, 
must raise the rent as reckoned on an acreage basis. 

2. The Farmer. 
The Labour Party's proposals do not include State farming, 
though some farms might be run in various parts of the country 
as a standard of good farming. In actual practice the County 
authorities, especially in the arable areas, would probably find 
themselves left with a certain number of farms which they could 
not let on satisfactory terms, and which they would farm them-
sch·es. On the whole, howe,·er, English farming would remain 
in the hands of individuals, and the State would exercise such 
pressure as it thought advisable in the same way as any large 
landlord. The bad farmer would not have his lease renewed, and 
the threat of non-renewal would be much more effective than 
to-day. The good and enterprising farmer would be encouraged 
by getting the buildings he requires. It would be easier to draft 
in new tenants, and land could be given to them from farms where 
the tenants, though suitable otherwise, have not sufficient capital 
to stock the area they rent at present. The public does not realise 
the extent to which large farms are now held by men who are 
practically bankrupt. The writer is a member of a pensions committee 
which has within two months received three applications 
for old age pensions from men farming over three hundred acres. 
In each ea e the applicant was able to show that he had no assets 
except hi diminishing stock, but only a steadily increasing overdraft. 
From a national point of view it is a calamity that men 
should in such cases retain control of large areas of land. 


10 

3. Marketing. 
Ultimately the problem of re-organising our farming-industry 
turns upon the farmer's budget. Buildings, drainage, conditions 
of tenure, credit facilities, intelligent management1 alC.these are 
important factors, but the future depends upon whether a well-
run mixed farm on average soil will show, over a series of years, 
a sufficient surplus to provide better wages for the men employed, 
and an income for the farmer which \"ill attract enterprising and 
intelligent men into the business. Most of the items on the 
expenditure side of the farmer's budget are, to a large extent, 
outside his control. Feeding stuffs, artificial manures, wages, 
rent, rates, repairs, railway charges, and the purchase of implements 
make up the bulk of his outgoings, but the individual farmer 
has very little say in the price which he pays for these services or 
commodities, nor can he usually reduce them substantially by 
combined efforts. Groups of small holders may join together to 
·' [ buy manures or cake, but anyone farming on a large enough 
scale to order goods by the truck-load has little to gain in this 
way. On the other side of the balance sheet, not only the farmer's 
incomings, but also his farm capital-his live stock, his stacks, 
and his growing crops-are entirely dependent on the fluctuations 
of markets, which are influenced to an overwhelming extent by 
two factors over which the farmer has no control, the price of 
imported food and the seasonal demand of industrial and city 
people. Very slight movements are sufficient to absorb the year's 
rent, or to make the differen-:::e between profit and loss on a year's 
work. A movement of four shillings a quarter in the price of 
wheat will cover the whole rent of the land on which it was grown, 
but such a change may occur during an afternoon's market. 
During the last two or three years both sheep and pigs have been 
the subject of violent price fluctuations. On three eastern county 
farms, the costings on which were analysed by Messrs. Venn and 
Carslaw, the fall in the price of sheep between March, 1925, and 
March, 1926, was sufficient to cause a loss of 47 per cent. on a 
total capital of £5,000. Pigs have been an even wilder trade, and 
the gambling nature of the " porker " business makes it almost 
impossible for a farmer to appreciate minor economies in feeding 
and management, which make a difference of two or three per cent. 
in the cost of production. Low and irregular prices for agricultural 
produce are the crux of the whole problem. 
Agricultural depression since the war has been world wide, 
except on virgin land, but there are special difficulties in England. 
For many years nearly every European country and most of the 
large exporting areas of virgin land have found in England the 
best market, not only for certain main crops, but even more for 
any surplus they may have after a good season. Other European 


I I 

countries are either protectionist or their urban population is too 
small to induce exporting firms to arrange for the commercial 
channels through which they could market their goods. Thus 
Denmark is a free trade country, but Copenhagen does not tempt 
even a Dutch potato grower to get rid of his surplus there, 
though there might be occasionally a small demand at a price 
higher than in England. There are well over thirty million people 
in England who are entirely divorced from the countryside, and 
1he business of feeding them has fallen into the hands of several 
highly capitalised concerns, whose mills, factories, and distributing 
organisations are arranged, except as regards the liquid milk 
trade, to deal almost exclusively with sea-borne food stuffs. These 
(Oncerns either use their own retail shops, like the Union Cold 
Storage Company and the Co-operative Wholesale Society, or else 
they supply the vast army of small-scale retailers. It is necessary 
to emphasise this point before discussing co-operation, for 
co-operative selling by English farmers is too often brought 
forward as a panacea by people who are really generalising from 
some particular commodity. This question must be considered 
in some detail, for the proposals of the Labour Party are dependent 
on the reorganisation of the home market. 

Our agricultural produce may be divided into six main groups, 
ond such division is essential. The marketing problem in each 
is different, and a great deal of the nonsense talked upon political 
platforms by all parties is due to general statements which are 
applicable to one group only. The figures are based on statistics 
for 1925, when the total value of all produce sold off farms was 
reckoned at £225,000,000. 

l. Milk and milk products make up just a quarter of the 
total, and dairy farming is now the most important branch of 
English agriculture. Five out of every six gallons is sold as 
" liquid milk," and as this is one of the few commodities produced 
on our farms which is not directly in competition with 
foreign imports, the farmers have been able to get better prices 
than for butter and cheese, which are subject to very severe corn-
petition. The distribution of milk in the smaller towns is usually 
done by farmers themselves, but the supplying of the London and 
the larger cities requires a considerab1e amount of capital, and 
in the South is dominated by one or two firms. Farmers' 
" pools " or co-operative ventures are hardly likely to have 
enough capital to fight the London combines, but they are making 
some headway in the North of England, where retailing is more 
chaotic. There are several farmers' co-operative creameries 
which deal with surplus milk, but they are handicapped by the 
v~ry low price of butter compared with that of liquid milk, and 

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by their inability to offer any more than the retailing combines, 
which buy most of their milk direct from the farms. The future 
would seem to lie in the public control of the retail milk trade in 
the cities and industrial areas. No very great decrease in the 
cost of distribution is possible until the household consumption 
has risen to the level of that in the United States or Sweden. 
The peddling of small quantities of milk to every house must be 
expensive, but the elimination of competition would save some 
waste. The field for farmers' co-operation is very restricted. 
unless they can drive the dairyman out of business, a contingency 
which is highly improbable, and might not help the public. 

2. The fattening of cattle and sheep for the butcher is the 
next largest branch of farming, amounting to 23 per cent. of the 
total. Nearly all fat stock is sold through local markets, and the 
bidders are butchers, or the salaried buyers for butc;;hers' rings 
in the large cities. Apart from the retailers there are few speculative 
middlemen in this business, and the only method of eliminating 
the middlemen is for farmers to run co-operative butchers' shops. 
These sometimes do quite well in small country towns, but the 
system will not stand any extension to the cities and industria! 
areas. A farmers' butchery is always faced with a dilemma. 
If it sells foreign meat it is merely another competing shop in 
a trade where competition is very keen, and everyone's hand is 
against the newcomer. If, however, the co-operative venture 
sells only home-grown meat, there will be seasons when it cannot 
compete against the ordinary butcher's shop, nor can it rely 
upon any feeling of loyalty amongst its customers, for all except 
the very richest people are quite used to eating chilled and frozen 
meat. It is absurd to talk as if farmers, with their few thousands 
of capital, could fight powerful organisations like the Union Cold 
Storage. 
3. The sale of pig-meat realises over £26,000,000 yearly, 
which is about 12 per cent. of the total. Most of this is bought 
by butchers as pork, and the same arguments apply to the 
" porker " trade as to fat stock generally. The bacon trade 
involves a fairly simple factory process, and is a suitable industry 
for a farmers' co-operative venture. Unfortunately there is intense 
foreign competition in the bacon trade, a competition which will 
become insupportable when the Argentine and North Africa are 
more developed. The farmer, therefore, prefers to sell his pigs 
for pork, just as he prefers to sell his milk " liquid " rather than 
as butter. T here are a few middlemen in the pig trade, but the 
speculative profits are taken by the retailers themselves. 
J. It is difficult to obtain reliable figures for the wheat sold 
for milling (as apart from poultry feed), and of barley sold for 

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malting (as apart from grist). The combined value of both would 
not exceed 8 per cent. of the total agricultural produce, a figure 
which is hardly appreciated by certain arable farming enthusiasts. 
To this same group we can fairly add sugar beet, bringing the 
total to about 10 per cent., because all three have to undergo an 
expensive process before they can be sold to the public as bread, 
beer, or sugar. In no case is it likely that farmers could undertake 
the process themselves. Milling is quite out of the question, 
for the industry is controlled by the mills at our large ports, and 
the smaller inland millers are rapidly being driven out of the 
business, yet apart from farmers undertaking the milling, malting, 
or sugar extracting processes themselves there is no room 
here for co-operative ventures. The farmer can always sell direct 
to the miller, maltster or sugar-beet factory. The first two groups 
undoubtedly make speculative profits, but these do not seem to 
be sufficient to make either industry very prosperous. If the inland 
millers get driven out of the business altogether, it may be necessary 
for farmers to collect their wheat to be ground at the port 
mills, but at present the idea of a wheat '' pool '' in England could 
only be advocated by people who do not understand the position. 

5. Poultry and eggs are sold to the value of about £15,000,00(). 
yearly, which is considerably more than the total sale of wheat. 
This is an industry in which grading and classification is essential, 
and because of this the speculative middleman flourishes 
exceedingly. There is an immense field for organised societies. 
which \~ill collect, grade, and guarantee eggs from its members, 
and will help them to dispose of their poultry. Whether it would 
be best for the producer to carry through the whole business, 
arrd retail to the consumer, is a more debatable point. 
6. The same arguments apply to the fruit and vegetable 
industry, most of which is totally disorganised, and in the South 
of England is dominated by that ridiculous anachronism, Covent 
Garden. The wastage here is enormous, but while the poultry 
industry should be able to organise itself, and the fruit growers. 
are already showing signs of doing so for themselves, some 
assistance is needed both from the Government and from 
municipalities to help them over the initial stages.
Jt is clear that no general policy is applicable to these different 
groups. In the case of milk, sugar beet, and pork, the question 
of direct foreign competition is negligible, nor is the speeulative 
middleman an important factor. The retailing of milk in the 
larger towns will be brought under public control, but otherwise 
there will be no alteration in the conditions governing these three 
commodities, except that the markets through which the porker 
tr·ade is carried ou may also come under public control. The



reorganisation of the fruit, vegetables, poultry and egg marketing 
is already being taken in hand by the Ministry, and to some extent 
by the Farmers' Union, and this work must be pressed on. It 
would be made much easier if the State was sole landlord. The 
State might include potatoes, but probably no other form of 
fruit, vegetables, and poultry under the operations of the Import 
Boards to be described in the next paragraph. The commodities 
mentioned in the paragraph comprise nearly three-quarters of the 
total produce from our farms. 

1 t is clear that little can be done to alter conditions in the 
production of meat and wheat without controlling imports. At 
present four-fifths of the \\·heat consumed in England, and two-
thirds of the meat, is imported, and the home prices are controlled 
by these imports. The foreign meat trade is already the monopoly 
uf a trust, and the Labour Party proposes to take over this business 
of importing meat and wheat, which would be entrusted to 
Import Boards. The advantages of these schemes are that it 
would enable the Gm·ernment to make bulk purchases from the 
exporters' '' pools,'' which are already in existence in Canada 
and elsewhere, and eliminate the number of extremely prosperous 
speculators who take their toll after the pool has sold the wheat 
or meat. It would be possible to assist the Dominions, and to 
place \'vheat or meat on the mad..:et at prices which could be 
arranged for many months ahead. By steadying the prices of 
these commodities the English farmer would be able to get somewhat 
better prices from the butcher and poultry feed dealer, and 
he would be able to conduct his work on a more businesslike 
footing. The milling industry would also be taken under public 
control, and would probably arrang·e to mill a certain proportion 
of English ,vheat. Local authorities would deal with the mills 
direct, organise the baking of bt·ead, and fix its price. 

It is difficult to foretell the exact lengths to which the work of 
the Import Boards would be carried, or how far the State will 
be ultimately dra\vn into the control of the internal markets. 
For the same reason no mention has been made of the important 
functions which the consumers' co-operative movement would 
take in the reorganisation of our whole system of marketing food. 
It is impot·tant to emphasise the point that there is no great 
future for retailing by farmers' co-operative societies. The effect 
of the Labour Party's proposals will be to put groups of English 
farmers in a position to deal on equal terms with the existing 
retailers, and with the factory owners who purchase their goods, 
and in the case of wheat to take the whole business of milling 
and baking under State control. 


LABOUR'S AGRICULTURAL POLICY. 

The foundations of the Labour Party's policy, which are to be 
found fully stated in Labour's Policy on Agriculture, are the 
emancipation of agricultural land from the hampering restrictions 
of private ownership, the establishment of equitable and humane 
conditions of life and employment for all rural workers, and the 
creation of the largest possible measure of security against the 
catastrophic changes in market conditions which are the curse 
of the industry to-day. With a view to encouraging r;:·ood 
husbandry, to establishing security of tenure at fair rents for 
efficient farmers, and to finding the capital for development 
which landlords to-day are unable to provide, the State should 
acquire the ownership of the land on equitable terms. At the 
same time, with the advice and assistance of bodies representing 

the experience of practical agriculturists-the representative 
character and influence of which it should seek to strengthen-
it must set itself to improve the financial and commercial organisation 
of the industry, with the defects of which farmers, 
however capable, cannot cope unaided. It must ensure, as has 
long been done in France and Germany, that both short and long 
term credit and facilities for insurance are easily available, must 
encourage the development of machinery for grading and 
collective marketing, both wholesale and retail, must secure that 
the farmer has at his disposal as efficient a service of transport 
and electrical power as are available for the manufacturer, and 
must introduce stability into the prices of meat and grain by the 
collective purchase of imported food stuffs. (From Labour and 
the Nation. Revised edition. Published by the Labour Party, 
1929, price threepence.) 


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