LARGE FARMS OR SMALL?
By H. D. WALSTON •
EFFICIENCY seems nowadays to be the password to our economic prosperity in the future, and in the minds of many people efficiency can only be attained by large undertakings. It is, therefore, not surprising to find it said that our future agriculture, in order to be prosperous, must be an agriculture composed entirely of large farms. There are, on the other hand, many who, in the words of Trevelyan, " perceive that agriculture . . . is a way of life unique and irreplaceable in its human and spiritual values." Such people feel that an agriculture run on big business lines would lose its human and spiritual values, and that the nation, in spite of its increased productivity, would in the long run be pooier. But it does not really matter to which school of thought you belong, because whatever the advocates of big-business farming may say or do, they will not be able suddenly to get rid of the 300,000 or so men who farm holdings of under 150 acres ; nor will those who think of farming merely as a way of life, and not as a means of producing food, be able to prevent the farmer who has made a success of cultivating 500 acres from buying another 500 acres when it comes into the market, and in this way increasing his holding up to the limits of his capital and ability. We must, therefore, be prepared to face the fact that English agriculture, for as many years ahead as we can see, will continue to be an agriculture composed primarily of farms of under 150 acres, with here and there larger farms, and even occasionally farms run by joint stock companies. What we can do, however, is to see where the large farm has an advantage over the small farm, and in what types of production the small farm can beat the large farm.
Broadly speaking, the large farmer has the advantage in all arable crops ; he can afford powerful and modern machinery ; he has sufficient labour to enable his men to work in gangs rather than as individualS. This, for instance, may mean in the costs of corn production an economy in harvesting amounting to £2 an acre, or possibly 2/- a cwt. When we remember that wheat at present sells for 13/10d. per cwt. the importance of such a saving in cost in only one operation becomes very apparent. The large farmer, too, has the advantage of being able to get the benefits of large-scale buying and selling ; in peace time this might mean a saving of 15 per cent. in the cost of artificial fertilisers. It means, too, that he can employ specialists to look after his machinery, his cultivations, and his book- keeping, whereas the small farmer has to do all these things for himself. But when it comes to livestock the picture is very different. True, the large farmer still can buy his feeding-stuffs cheaper, or if
he grows them himself can produce them cheaper than the 'small farmer, but animals no less than human beings are Individuals and they require individual attention. No man, however able he may be, can hope to know personally the idiosyncrasies of more than 50 cows and their calves, or of more than 300 ewes and their lambs, and even to do this is a full-time job. Therefore, the large farmer who has more animals than this, or who has other activities besides livestock, has to leave the care of his stock to other people, and with the best will in the world few employees can take the same interest in an animal as the master himself. So it is in the realm of livestock, and particularly in the realm of breeding stock, that the small man is pre-eminent ; here he will be able to use to the full all his inborn experience and lore, and here it is that his future lies. Because he is going to go on farming in a small way, whatever other people may think he ought to do, we must see how he can best be helped to attain the efficiency which will bring prosperity to all of us, and, at the same time, retain that " unique and irreplaceable " way of life so important for its " human and spiritual values."
I have already said that the advantages that the big man has over the small man are those which allow him to use large and expensive machinery, employ specialist labour for specialist jobs and trade in the best market. These advantages must be given alst) to the small man, not so much in his own interest as in the interest of efficient production. Heavy machinery must either be owned co-operatively or contractors must be encouraged to do work with such machinery at reasonable rates for small farmers. (In parenthesis, this contracting- work would be a good opening for the countryman who is coming out of the Army after five years experience of mechanised warfare.) In some counties parish machinery-pools have already been started, whereby the farmers of one locality join together and share such machinery as they have, and occasionally buy more machinery which they could not afford as individuals. Such forms of co-operation could also be used for the bulk purchase of feeding-stuffs, so that instead of twenty-five individual farmers each placing an order for 2 tons of linseed cake, one order for 50 tons could be placed on their behalf. On the selling side the advantage of co-operative action has already been well demonstrated by the Milk Marketing Board, with the result that the same price is now obtained by the milk producer who is selling 10 gallons of milk a day and the man who is selling 200. The extension of advisory services, and particularly of milk-recording, has now opened the way for the small farmer to have access to the advantages in this sphere formerly enjoyed only by the large farmer. Finally, the wider use of artificial insemination will allow the man with ten cows to use a bull whose price formerly put him out of reach of all except the largest and wealthiest breeders.
When all this has been accomplished, the only drawback from which the small farmer will suffer will be in the matter of labour. It is undeniable that most farm workers prefer to work on a large farm where they will be one of a dozen others, rather than on a farm where they will be the only paid employee. One reason for this is that there is more chance of their being able to have time off, as their work can be done by their fellow-employees when there are many of them. Another, and perhaps more important, reason, is that on the large farm they have the chance of promotion, the chance of working with good machines, and usually a better opportunity of learning their trade. This is a difficult problem to overcome. Perhaps the solution lies once more in co-operative action among the small farmers of the parish; whereby they join together to help each other at such times as harvesting, and even employ one man whose job it is to travel from farm to farm to fill in when one of them has a day off. So far as the question of learning their trade under an expert is concerned, evening or winter classes at a local Farm Institute can fill' this gap, so that even in the matter of labour the small farmer need be under .no very great disadvantage.
In this way the traditional pattern of our agriculture will be retained, the small farmer will not need' preferential help in order to enable him to compete with the large one, while the progressive man with means and ability will still be able to expand to the limits of his resources. In this country there is room for all types and sizes of farms : what is essential is to ensure that each type and each size makes the maximum contribution of which it is capable, no less to our material than to our spiritual welfare.
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