is largely of depression, failure, and inability to make ends meet. Tenants of big estates are not unnaturally prone to cry out in this fashion because they are glad to create the right atmosphere for a reduction of rent, and those whose acts of husbandry are not above suspicion are pleased to join in because the stories of failure help them to assure their listeners that their bad state is in no wise due to their own shortcomings. Some farmers would appear to believe that they can soften hard times by spending two or three days a week in one of the neighbouring markets and discussing the future with brother pessimists. They would be better employed on their farms. Let it be admitted that many sound farmers have been heavily hit and are carrying on under great difficulties; those who farm the Wolds running south from the East Riding of Yorkshire, and those others, for example, who hold the heavy cornlands, are suffering through no fault of their own; their land is hard to farm, labour is difficult, on the Wolds water is scarce, and the weather has been unfavourable. Yet it is not incorrect to state that in nearly every part of agricultural England where natural conditions give the farmer a chance, the best men are either holding their own or are making small profits; while, in the main, those who are losing money on reasonable soil under normal conditions are the men who have failed to recognise the truth that agriculture is passing through a transitional period.

Wheat production on the heavy lands is under no more than a temporary cloud, the general tendency being, one imagines, for the crop to right itself and become a paying proposition. This is the opinion of Dr Ruston at Leeds, who thinks that the Canadian wheat pool will steady prices in Europe and enable the farmer to hold his own. Men who watch the world's markets because their living depends in part upon the fluctuation in prices believe that the English producer will show a profit in 1927, given a successful harvest. It is in the direction of newer and better varieties that the wheat grower must look if he is to take full advantage of the coming alteration in the balance between production and consumption. Sir Rowland Biffen, speaking from his famous corn cages outside Cambridge, thinks

that our average of production might well rise from 32 bushels to the acre and even reach 40. Practical farmers, men who realise that while the urban areas continue to decide our agricultural policy they cannot hope for either protection or subsidies, plead for a tax on imported flour, point out that if we have wheat milled in this country the offals become available, and if we had more offals the price would tend to fall and the pig fattener for example, would benefit. This is as it may be; undoubtedly the milling interests control the offals of the wheat in a fashion that is more effective than scrupulous. A leading merchant told me that in the spring of this year when the price of middlings' was 77. 10s, a ton on rail in London, a big group sold 12,000 tons to the Continent at 5l, a ton in order to keep prices up against the British consumer. While such practices remain possible an embargo or a tax upon imported flour would have little value. With this aspect of the question I hope to deal later.

Where barley is concerned, the cry all through the producing area, particularly in the hard-hit Wold country, is for a tax on imported malting varieties. 'If the brewers are not patriotic enough to buy our malting samples,' said a big barley farmer, 'they ought to be taxed for their support of the foreigner. They are hard to please, and they do not quite know their own minds. One year they demand a certain variety and the next year they change.' He went on to tell how he had offered a sample to a maltster, who refused it, but bought it some hours later in the same market from another man at an increase of 6s. per quarter. This may be an isolated instance, but the barley that the maltster will not buy goes with all the low-grade barleys to be ground for feeding at a price that does not cover the cost of growing them.

Undoubtedly, the great hope of the farming world at present is sugar beet production. From Essex to Yorkshire and across into the west, over hundreds of miles of country, you find men talking hopefully of their sugar beet crops. New factories are springing up, considerable areas are being planted for the first time this year. In this direction, as in so many others, one finds farmers who have delayed taking advantage of the new conditions

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and consequently have sacrificed considerable profits. The benefit of every new development comes in largest measure to the pioneers. Those who had faith are making profits; those who lag behind may do well, but they will not do what they might have done. The beet position is not free from problems, because very many men are growing the crop on soil that is obviously unsuitable, and the present average of production must be increased considerably if the industry is to continue when the subsidy given by the Labour Party and maintained by the present Government runs off. Should the question of its continuation arise, then some inquiry ought to be directed to the finance and profits of the factories. One hears of factories that are yielding from 25 to 50 per cent. annually to the financiers behind them. When there is no longer any Government support for sugar beet growing the producer will be faced by the competition of the foreigner in countries where men and women work for a maximum of 2s. a day. There the farmer can grow his beet at a profit and at a price with which the English farmer with his Wages Board cannot possibly compete, unless he can win a bigger return from the acre than his rival, and will unite in stolid loyalty to his brethren in resisting the attempt of the factories to divide and-plunder. At present the average of production is round about eight tons; it must be twelve before the position is secure, but this figure supposes that the people behind the factories continue to demand, or to receive, the same very high standard of profits. Sugar beet is serving the country in many ways; it provides the farmer with a paying crop, it creates the demand for seasonal labour in the fields, and in the later year from the beginning of October to some time in January, it affords very large employment in the factories. Work at some of these places is in twelve-hour shifts, and the rate of wages is high, with the result that men after enjoying a big return for their labour for three months are apt to go on the dole until the factory opens again. The effect of this practice is inevitably demoralising, but there is so much to be thankful for in the success of the sugar beet development that these minor difficulties may well be forgotten. Home-grown sugar has enabled many a plucky and enterprising farmer to carry on.

The next big change that we find pending in farmland and unnoticed by many farmers of long experience, is in the size and texture of stock. Many fatteners, particularly in Norfolk, to name one county, buy rough Irish stores and keep them until they are ripe; sometimes when these animals reach the market they are over three years old. But their quality has not improved with age, they yield coarse joints of the kind that the modern housekeeper does not want; they are not fitted to compete with the better-class beef that comes from the Argentine and elsewhere after grazing on prairie pasture at little or no expense to the owner. Almost without exception rough cattle kept too long involve the farmer in loss, so heavy that Dr Ruston holds bullock fattening responsible for some three-quarters of the English farmer's deficit. Unsuitable sheep that yield large joints and an abundance of fat are also raised in many parts of England in strange, persistent defiance of public requirements; and there, too, money is lost. The farmer keeps his stock too long and spends too much money in preparing it for an unresponsive market. A case was brought to my notice in Yorkshire when a man sent lambs and shearlings into the market. The lambs fetched the higher price by 58., and the farmer who had lost a year's keep and 5s. had the value of one clip to set against it. The modern practitioner must learn in the near future to produce what is known as baby beef-that is, an animal brought to maturity in a maximum of twenty months and a minimum perhaps of seventeen. He must grow small and readily matured mutton, and, incidentally, he must standardise his pigs. At present we have a dozen varieties or more, while the trade demands could be well covered by two. The fault is with the pedigree breeders, the men who make their living by getting prices for pedigree stock that are out of all proportion to the intrinsic value of the animal. The loss attaching to this system is easily seen. farmer pays a large price for a pedigree sow, but when its progeny go to market they fetch as much as, and no more than, the ordinary utility animal; the only chance of making money is to pass the pedigree on to somebody else, who will try to pass on to a third party, who will endeavour to sell to a fourth, and so ad

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infinitum. But the limits of credulous stock buyers are reached after a little experience, and then men realise that in the eyes of the butcher the Plantagenet of the pigsty and his plebeian brother are worth the same price per score for pork or bacon. Another disadvantage of our present system is that there is no uniformity in size. The big stores and dealers want pigs that are as much alike as peas in a pod, and will not buy willingly from a factory where no two carcases are quite similar. The Danes understand our market needs better than our own farmers do, and they see to it that the sides they send over are of like weight and dimensions.

Yet throughout the journey, in all counties where pigs were kept on a large scale, farmers are making money because the importation of fresh pork has been forbidden owing to the risk of foot-and-mouth disease; but where bacon pigs are concerned our factories cannot get all they need, or what they need, and their clients are constantly complaining about the irregularity of size and shape. An instance came to my knowledge a little while ago. The manager of a certain factory went to one of the great stores and offered a large line of sides of bacon. The buyer said, 'I would like you to see our stock,' and took him through a warehouse where hundreds of sides of uniform weight and length and thickness were hanging. If you can give us this,' said the buyer, 'I can take whatever you have to offer. Our cutters here know exactly what they will find on a side and where to get it, but if we had sides that vary considerably it would simply mean trouble and wrong calculation in the provision department. I cannot do anything to bring those mistakes about while we can get all we want from elsewhere.'

The development of our dairy herds has been a matter on which the present Minister of Agriculture hás congratulated farmers of the country, but close inquiry into conditions does little to justify these congratulations. The milk trade is largely in the hands of the combines; farmers cannot or will not help themselves. Whereas in Switzerland the milk producer can get threequarters of the price that the consumer pays, in England he cannot get half. During April, May, and June the price paid by the big Metropolitan combine did not