What Should We Grow ?
An indirect controversy is proceeding among our more theoretic agriculturists on rival policies: should we try to be self-sufficient all round, so far as maybe, or so arrange matters that each sort of food be grown in the country most suitable for it ? One of the troubles is that England, especially, and less emphatically Great Britain, have a soil and climate suited to almost every form of production. Our wheat yield is exceptionally heavy because we can sow in autumn. We are traditional producers of the best farm animals. Modem experience comes down in favour of more fruit and more vegetables, even s ery early broccoli. The cloche— and the glasshouse—counteract the few drawbacks of this temperate clime of ours. How nearly self-sufficing even a village or group of villages can be is being most persuasively demonstrated by the Village Produce Association, especially at its Hertfordshire centre. If only England consisted of villages, how simple our agricultural policy would be! But the towns, poor things, must always be nourished on stale and imported foods. It is impossible to arrive at a true agricultural and therefore rural policy without continuous reference to the needs of the towns. A sug- gestive view of the subject (somewhat obscured by 'isms and abstractions) appears in the always interesting notes published by the Oxford economists, who emphasise the need of "marrying agriculture to nutrition." •
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