118 Journal of Agricultrrrnl Economics.

THE EDUCATIONAL AND ADVISORY APPROACH TO THE EFFICIENCY OF T H E INDIVIDUAL FARM."

By ARTHUR JONES.

It would be a fairly simple exercise to detail and review the various steps taken and the schemes operating here and abroad in the field of agricultural education and advice, but I doubt if that would be acceptable or profitable to you or myself. I therefore took the view that I should speak in fairly general terms and not in too systematic a way, of the various aspects and approaches to individual farm efficiency which in turn raise the whole problem of education and advice. A certain measure of poetic licence is therefore needed when the title is related to what I have to say.

I have been directly or indirectly concerned with agricultural education and advisory work for many years and during the last 12 months or so I have had the opportunity of seeing something of what has been achieved in most of the European countries. A great deal has been accomplished and I should be, and am, the last person to belittle or minimize the efforts and achievements of those who have given much thought and time to raising the efficiency and improving the living standards of those who work on the land. On the other hand this should not relieve any of us of the responsibility of reviewing and examining the position we have arrived at and possible future developments. After all, the only real justification for any country spending substantial sums of money on education and advice is to increase the efficiency of the farmer so that he can produce food at a price within the reach of his clients a t home or outside his own country. Although later in this paper I shall be examining possible developments in the existing system of education and advisory work, I want to make it quite clear at the outset of this Presidential Address that it is not my wish-nor my intention-to criticise existing services here or abroad. It is my purpose rather to explore possibilities for consideration which may not lead now or in the future to any practical decisions. To paraphrase the late John Maxton (who incidentally gave more thought to this problem of education than anybody else I know), " I am not concerned with decisions and dicta but with arguments and possibilities."

The establishment and early years of development of agricultural education and advisory work in most countries were associated with Universities, Colleges and Farm Institutes and there can be no doubt that this close contact with an educational centre created and attracted local farmers' loyalties. Judged by present standards educational facilities and advisory services of those days appear to us as very modest enterprises but there is no doubt that they laid a solid foundation for the subsequent expansion that has taken place in all European countries. One of the most, if not the most important result of the development of technical and economic advisory work, was that it convinced governments and many farmers that increased productivity and higher living standards would follow. The advent of the last war and the sudden promotion of farming to the status of a priority industry

* Presidential Address to the Agricultural Economics Society, 1958.

Journal of Agricultural Economics. 119

attracting far greater resources of money and labour to ensure maximum production, produced a rapid transformation of the scene. Supervision, persuasiqn, and even dispossession it is true were added to advice to achieve this transformation, but there can be no doubt that without the good relation- ships established by the early pioneers in education and advisory work, this task would have been far more difficult to accomplish.

The clear-cut task of the industry during and immediately following the war made it necessary to consider the detailed aspects of the organisation and methods of advisory work. In 1946, the National Agricultural Advisory Service was established on a nation-wide basis in England and Wales. This was a clear recognition of the need to put farm advisory work on a more permanent footing and to provide facilities which should enable it to overcome one of its pre-war diaculties-that of only being able to cater for a very limited number of farmers. Concentration of county and provincial staffs into one co-ordinated organisation would, it was thought, provide a service which would be quickly responsive to new developments in scientific and technical knowledge and changing economic circumstances. I t would do justice to the problems by supplying resources adequate to meet them and offer attractive career prospects to the personnel engaged. These arrangements, as you know, did not apply to the Provincial Agricultural Economists who continued to work under the aegis of their respective Universities. Almost immediately, however, the post-war need for technical advice to be placed in a context of economics began to emerge and liaison oficers were appointed to give, with the help of Provincial Economics staff, instruction to N.A.A.S. officers and to provide the means for the interchange of experience and viewpoints between economists and general agricultural advisers. Whatever views there may be on the ultimate success of these developments, there can be no doubt whatever that they represent a serious attempt by the State to provide the agricultural industry with a service of advice and information both for its day-to-day and loneterm needs.

Comparison of the numbers of persons engaged in advisory work in this country compared with other OEEC countries would suggest that we are well served. On the face of it the agricultural industries of only two anything like comparable countries-Germany and the Netherlands-are more fortunate in this respect. Accurate comparisons are made difficult by the fact that some countries employ unqualified personnel on routine administrative and regulatory duties that also imply some advisory work.

So far as one can determine the position is less satisfactory when judged by the criterion of the financial investment in the advisory service as a proportion of the national agricultural output. Here England and Wales, with a figure of 0.25 per cent. ranks well below others (e.g. Sweden 0-66 per cent., Norway 0.55 per cent., Denmark 1.5 per cent., Netherlands 0.29 per cent., Austria 1.2 per cent). Scotland, incidentally, can claim a higher proportionate figure at 0.37 per cent. But when all comparisons have been made and forms or organisation praised or criticised, the central point remains. Is the individual farmer in this country getting the service he needs to raise farming standards and his own management efficiency ? To some extent this is a function of the factors determining the nature of the relationship between him and the adviser. Using the economists’ classification we may say that from the “ demand side ” -the farmer-the following factors operate : a reluctance to be told one’s job, a marked and seemingly irrational attitude towards government servants (“ We do not like the civil servant type of adviser,” someone said recently) ; a failure to appreciate the background to a policy, a natural inertia or resistance

120 Journal of Agricultural Economics. to change coupled with a conviction that change will probably cost money ; resistance to formal educational training.

There are, of course, a large number of farmers to whom these do not apply, but in a phase of development during which we are concerned- particularly with the small farmer, we will do well to consider how serious they may be as a limitation to successful advisory work.

Before returning to the question of whether or not the farmer, particularly the “ small ” farmer, is getting the service he needs, may I digress and say a few words on the subject of farm adviser relationships. In fact, little attention has been given to what one might call the educational psychology of advisory work, and in this respect we fall behind many other countries. The greater economic importance of farming in the national economy of some of these countries has perhaps attracted more workers to this field and I realise it has not had conclusive results. I know, too, that our ‘ I reserve ” when faced by what we call “ propaganda ” partly accounts for our shyness in the matter. But when you consider how extremely valuable a knowledge of people, their likes and dislikes and their community relationships can be to an adviser, you must marvel a t the determination with which University faculties of agriculture have kept subjects such as sociology, social history and educational psychology out of their curricula. As a result of the formation of the N.A.A.S. we have the valuable arrangement whereby advisers may pursue careers first in one part of the country and then another. In this way they widen their range of experience of farming and farmers. But until they gain some knowledge of the social history and geography of the new areas and people with whom they work, their influence in the community is bound to be limited. Some measure of formal training on the social side in their student or post-graduate days would at least sharpen their curiosity and make their translation from one appointment to another an easier and more rewarding process.

These observations are particularly applicable to the increasing numbers of advisers working with groups. The small farmer, isolated on his farm, has a highly developed attitude of reserve and hopeful self-sufficiency. He can only be effectively reached in the first place in association with those who farm in similar physical and economic conditions. Here group work should precede personal contacts and open up the way for them. And the methods of successful group work are therefore an essential part of the qualilications of an adviser working in areas where confidence in the advisory personnel has still to be established.

In the course of my recent travels in OEEC countries, I was struck by the considerable efforts being made to render advisory work more effective and economise the time of valuable personnel by group work. This, I might say, did not take the form of lectures followed by question and answer, but self-help in the form of free and intimate discussion. The method was giving particularly good results in the promotion and development of farm organisation and planning.

There can be no doubt that the pressure of post-war economic events on agriculture in most European countries, coupled with the growing experience and enthusiasm of advisory services, is bringing home to farmers the manage- ment aspect of their business. You will have noticed that whereas a few years ’

ago the local and the technical press would have ignored economic surveys they now not only review the publication of results, but frequently comment upon them in their editorial columns. Even the national press is finding the work of agricultural economists worthy of reproduction and comment.

I see all this as part of a process of helping to bring the farmer into the mainstream of national economic development in the least painful way-by

Journal of Agricdtzrral E c o m i c s . 121

sharpening his appreciation of the place he occupies in the industry and making him aware of probable future developments in the economics of his industry. Working from day to day, or contemplating from year to year the persistently wide range of costs incuned by groups of farms producing the same product sometimes makes it diflicult to believe that progress is, in fact, being made. But anyone who notes the active attitude of the farming community towards the science, technology and economics of their industry compared with only two or three decades ago, will recognise a definite change.

The advisory services have played an important part in producing this change, backed, of course, by the authorities responsible for formal agricultural education, the Young Farmers’ Clubs and other institutions aided, as far as this country is concerned, by the stimulus of the price review that each year concentrates fanners’ attention on economics in a very real way. Industry and commerce have also made their contribution to advisory work and I am sure we can expect further interest and development from these sources in the future.

May I now turn to the problem of individual farm efficiency and the close relationship it has with Education and Advice. I think it fair to say that even today there is a not insignificant part of British Agriculture still unaffected by the scientific and technical progress made in the last 30 years. That is not to say that the farmer is backward or that education itself has failed. What I think it does mean is that education in the narrow sense of instruction has not reached the generalityof farmers. There are several reasons for this such as geographical and transport difficulties making it hard for education authorities to concentrate their efforts which are easily possible in towns. Again, although agriculture is a large industry it is made up of about 300,000 relatively small units scattered all over the country which does not make it easy to provide an intimate approach to agricultural education. Probably arising from the large number of small farms is the undeniable fact that anyone can start farming if he has capital irrespective of whether he.or she has received training or has acquired the right kind of experience. This is particularly true of small family farms where by and large economic forces do not drive the inefficient out. In other words, the agricultural industry does not demand a technical qualification or require an effectively organised and supervised period of apprenticeship before a person enters on a farming career. This must, therefore, impose a considerable burden on any form of subsequent education and advice given.

There are many other factors which make some people wonder if we have not tended to put the cart before the horse. Perhaps we should, therefore, in the first instance, concentrate still more on ways and means of providing formal vocational instruction for those entering the industry whether they are or are not fanners’ sons. If this were done it would mean that the practising farmer of the future would be familiar with the scientific, technical and economic implications of most farming operations and would be in a better position to take full advantage of subsequent advice offered.

It is for others, in particular farmers themselves, to say whether or not it should be obligatory to have some standard training and proficiency tests before engaging in farming. It would be a bold man who could say that any such requirements would be practicable or acceptable in this country, and I do not intend to express any opinion on that. My main interest is in the effect the absence of such training may have on the advisory services which in most countries have to make good this initial drawback. To me it is not the primary function of an advisory service to educate in the purist sense of the term, but to demonstrate and advise. I mentioned earlier that I had the opportunity in

1'23 Journal of Agricdtural Economics. most of the Continental countries to look at their education and advisory services and E am also familiar, to some extent, with developments in the United States. I have therefore given much thought to the best way of putting before you some ideas for consideration without making comparisons and invidious distinctions ; equally important, without the least intention of appearing to dogmatise on a subject about which so much has been said and written. The only dogmatic statement I shall make is that no system of education ind farm advisory services is static. New scientific knowledge and techniques in agriculture and rapidly changing economic conditions alone demand a dynamic approach. It is therefore very unlikely that what is appropriate today will be acceptable tomorrow.

There are naturally and inevitably many views varying from country to country and within the same country as to the best form of organisation for agricultural and advisory work among farmers and farm workers. It is there- fore a tricky business, indeed a dangerous one, to say that this or that system is the best. Every country thinks its own service is second to none as it has been rightly established and developed on lines appropriate to the agricultural, social and economic structure of the country, On the other hand, there is so much to learn from the experience of others that if we synthesised as it were, the developments that have taken place in one or other of the countries I visited, we would find that in a " Modal Service " the following are some of the important questions which would have to be considered :-

(1) The provision of a comprehensive system of further education and training for new entrants into farming.

(2) Whether in the circumstances of a particular country it would be desirable that some form of appropriate qualification should be required of farmers before thay manage a farm.

(3) The respective shares of the State and of the agricultural industry in financial responsibility for advisory work.

(4) In particular, the respective places of farm organisation and planning and of other lines of advisory work in a State Service, and in that provided by the industry itself.

I have already referred to some of the diaculties peculiar to agriculture in organising a system of education and further training for farmers and farm workers. There is no point in labouring these and others any further. The fact is that, generally speaking, we must take things as we find them and realise that the industry cannot be changed to suit the convenience of education, but that a system of education should be designed to meet the needs of those operating within the existing structure.

The educational structure has already changed much in our time, and today the pace of change has quickened and its scope considerably widened. The 1944 Education Act recognised the needs for more secondary schools, and for extending the period of learning-first to the age of 15 and, when circum- stances allow, to 16. It gave each local education authority full responsibility for the first time for the whole range of educational activities within its area-primary, secondary and the many forms of further education. In ten years, from 1946 to 1956, the picture of further education has altered remarkably. Full-time students have risen from 45,000 to 76,000 ; part-time students from 200,000 to 466,000 (of which the numbers released by employers as gone up from 167,000 to 414,000). Evening classes then attended by 1,352,000 now attract nearly two million. Industry has fully recognised the benefits that accrue from further education, but this is not so true of agriculture : although in the same ten years the part-time releases from farm employment

Journal of Agricultural Economics. 123

have grown from 1,000 to 5,OOO, only the fringe of the industry has responded. For mining and building the 1956 figures are 41,000 and 29,000.

Today, the emphasis in our educational thinking is on technology, and the White Paper of 1956 gave warning of the dangers that would follow any national neglect of research and the practical application of modem science and techniques. Further, it detailed a five-year plan for increasing the output from advanced courses at technical colleges and doubling the numbers of students released part-time by employers. All this is to be done on a voluntary basis, but apart from this there is in the 1944 Act provision for the establish- ment of County Colleges at which attendance between the ages of 15 and 18 would be compulsory, and for which release from all employment-including agriculture-would be obligatory.

Although the White Paper did not deal specifically with agricultural education, it did state that " British farming and horticulture are developing rapidly and the provision of education to meet their needs is as important as in industry."

We can all agree with that statement and it is to be hoped that the De La Wan Committee now considering Agricultural Education will take us a stage further in our approach to this vital problem of recruiting competent and well-trained workers into the industry. In this connection no scheme of training can be really effective unless the industry itself accepts responsibility for releasing young employees for part-time formal instruction and takes other steps to train and supervise their work on the farm. On this particular occasion I am, however, more concerned with the education and training of those operating farms and particularly with farms of from 5 to 100 acres which account for nearly three-quarters of the total in England and Wales.

I am certain that the standard of husbandry and economic efficiency on the larger farms in England and Wales is at least as high as in any other country I have visited. I do not think this is so true of all our smaller farms which, incidentally, are large in the eyes of most Continental countries. There are, of course, many reasons for their relatively less satisfactory economic position such as lack of capital, inadequate or badly designed buildings, the uneconomic size of the unit under our conditions, absence of co-operative buying and selling organisations, and so on. But these are not the only if, indeed, the most important reasons. To my mind the most significant single contributory cause is education, or rather the lack of it. To say this is not to say that our small farmers are ignorant or uneducated in the broad sense of the latter term. I know personally very many small farmers in Wales, the North Midlands and the north-west who are exceptionally well informed and cultured men and women. What I do say is that the generality of these farmers have not had the advantage of formal instruction and training in the theory and practice of agriculture and, most important, in the basic principles and techniques that determine efficient management and planning. A great deal is said and written about the need in present-day circumstances for the farmer to be something of a scientist, an engineer, an economist, an accountant, and so forth, if he is to prosper. All of us will readily agree that the tremendous progress made in all fields of agricultural science and practice during the last twenty years demands of the farmer ability, technical knowledge and managerial skill of a high order. Further, we look on the land as a trust which is passed on from generation to generation and the trustees-the farmers-have therefore a special responsibility to those who follow. To meet his own needs and safeguard the future, surely one of the most important steps to be taken is to establish and provide an appropriate system of education and training. More- over, as I have already mentioned, an Advisory Service cannot be M y effective

124 Journal of Agricultural Economics.

unless and until its clients are able to understand and implement the advice offered. In these days of rapid advances in every aspect of crop and animal husbandry, mechanisation and in methods of disease and pest control, it is asking of the farmer and the advisory services an almost impossible task. I was very impressed in the Scandinavian countries, in Holland, Switzerland and Germany with the attention given to agricultural education. I will go so far as to say that apart altogether from political and social considerations, the economic viability of thousands of s m d family farms in Northern Europe is due in the first place to the comprehensive system of education and training provided and, secondly, the resultant ability of farmers to readily understand, assimilate and put into practice what the advisory services recommend.

In the " Modal Service " education both for employees and farmers would be of first importance and its success would, in a large measure, depend on the co-operation and help of the employers who would in the long run be the principal beneficiaries. In as much as the small farmer is concerned, I am convinced from what has been achieved in other countries that residential Farm Institute training for at least one year will, in the long run, make a major contribution to the problem of increasing individual efficiency and ensuring the viability of this type of holding. I am not entering into a discussion of the mechanics of accomplishing this revolution, except to say that if it can be done elsewhere it can be done here. I would, however, suggest that very close examination of the existing curricula followed at educational centres should be made. It seems to me that fundamentally little change has been made in the teaching of agriculture for the last thirty years. It still largely remains, on the one hand, a subject to be treated as a science and on the other, as an art. Of course, applied science is the basis of crop and animal production and the control of disease. Growing bigger and better crops and livestock is no doubt an art. But the real problem and main purpose of agricultural education is how to weld the science and the art of farming into an economic industry and a profitable business for the farmer. The essential task of CO- ordinating science, technical methods and economics is the responsibility of the farmer on the farm ; any course of agricultural education should therefore teach the student how to handle knowledge in a systematic way and how to go about using this knowledge towards one end-profit. Without profit it is idle and wishful thinking to talk of higher rural standards of living and social and economic security.

My second point is directly related to the first. To judge from some experience abroad, and bearing in mind the continuing pressure for higher efficiency that we are likely to see, we may find the question of qualifications to farm coming to the fore. In the Netherlands technical qualifications and the possession of a diploma, together with three years' practical experience are already required before a person can become a grower and manage a horti- cultural holding. Also, to farm the new " polders " certain stipulations are made, e.g. the successful candidate must be over 26 years and under 50 years of age. He must also satisfy the Selection Committee that he has both the ability and the capital to run the farm. At the present moment the Minister of Agriculture is preparing a Bill which will be presented to Parliament at the end of this year, when every person farming in the Netherlands may be required to have technical qualifications and experience, plus a recognised diploma in agriculture before he enters on a farming career.

Farming, when all is said and done, is an economic activity and in the bad old days a farmer who failed had to go or accept a lower standard of living. Today, no government here or elsewhere tolerates that kind of ruthless competition and agriculture like many other industries is rightly provided

Journal of Agricultural Economics. 125

with various forms of safeguards. On the other hand, if in these more enlightened days the State and public opinion demand fair play for agriculture, suggestions for requiring the prospective farmer to receive adequate training and pass a satisfactory test of professional competence may attract support. It is already the case that landlords wil l not let a farm unless they are satisfied that the applicant is knowledgeable and capable of operating the farm efficiently and profitably. Further, if it is admitted that provision should be made for agricultural education [and it is very unlikely that anyone will question this), i t implies that a standard of proficiency in the subject has been or has not been reached when the student leaves Farm Institute, College or University.

Of course, in discussing qualifications or standards of farming competence, there are all kinds of economic, physical and social factors which must have considerable inhence on any line of action followed. In the Netherlands there is the tremendous pressure of population for a limited acreage of very valuable land, which is not the case in this country or the United States for example. Moreover, many will doubt whether in this country any suggestion of obligatory qualifications would ever be accepted by public opinion. I must, therefore, make it clear that I am not personally advocating in this paper that there should or should not be any entrance qualification. I do believe, however, that it would be an excellent thing if it were generally accepted that those wishing to farm should regard it as their duty to themselves and to the land, that they should obtain qualifications and experience that would enable them to prosper, and I suggest that this is an idea which farming organisations might well seek to spread.

If this idea of the need for technical and economic qualifications were developed together with some form of regular apprenticeship for farm workers, many believe that not only would the status of the industry be raised to a level its importance demands, but a definite step forward would have been taken in the direction of increasing the efficiency of the individual farm. It therefore follows that an advisory service would not be expected (as is often the case now) to make good the initial deficiency in the education and training of the new entrant, but to discharge more effectively the functions for which-as its very name implies-it was established. Again, it can be fairly assumed that if the technical and managerial competence of all farmers were on a higher level, advisory work based on the “group approach”-particularly in the field of farm organisation and planning, would result in a much more comprehensive coverage.

This paper is already longer than I had intended it to be and I shall therefore only briefly comment on the last two points of the four referred to earlier. The third consideration is how far should the industry itself be responsible for some aspects of advisory work. In some countries, notably Denmark, farmers themselves through their organisations are in the main responsible for the advisory services. They may and do receive State financial aid, but by and large non-governmental institutions are responsible for a considerable part of the finance required and for the actual running of the services. I know there is a great deal to be said for both systems, but it has been argued that the industry could provide in some degree its own advisory services and that it has in almost every country, organisations and institutions through which this could be accomplished.

Agriculture is, without question, an industry that has made tremendous advances in the last two or three decades, but curiously enough self-help in the direction of providing technical advice to its members is not one of them. It may be that an organisation like the Milk Marketing Board in England and Wales, for example, which is in direct and continuous contact with about

1 26 Jouvnal of Agricultural Economics.

half of the total number of farmers in this country, could develop and extend further the service of technical assistance and advice it gives to its members. The same could apply to other institutions and authorities concerned with agriculture. The marketing organisatioes and development authorities are directly concerned with the product the farmer sells ; they have a very real interest in that it should be of a quality and quantity the market can absorb. I t is therefore their concern and responsibility to build up a thriving industq and to this end one of their main objectives could well be that of developing through the advisory work of their own officers, an accepted standard of technical efficiency leading to further specialisation which is almost inevitable.

Although Agriculture with a capital ‘‘ A ” is a great industry, farming at the point where technical advice is needed is local and by and large concerned with the production of one or two commodities which make up the bulk of the farmers’ income. In these circumstances, the provision of technical advice through advisers whose main concern is with a particular produce or a particular enterprise, may reach more quickly a larger number of producers than would otherwise be possible. There is, I believe, a great deal to be said for differentiation of function in advisory work, particularly a t the farm level. The kind of differentiation I have in mind would arise where specialised knowledge of certain aspects of farming already exists in an organisation serving agriculture. In such cases the special knowledge and skills possessed could be used and expanded into a technical advisory service for that section of the industry.

To come to the last question, it is in all countries an accepted fact that there should be a close relationship between Education, Research and Advice if the farming community is to obtain the optimum benefit from all three services. Their structures and the degree of integration between them, however, vary considerably, depending largely on historical background and economic environment. In some countries agricultural education and farm advice are provided from the same source ; in others they are separately organised. Similarly with regard to Research and experimental centres the organisation may be directly and jointly the responsibility of the State and separated from the advisory side, or one may find Research centres organised separately and not associated with demonstration farms and advisory work in general. On some other occasion I may be allowed to give a paper on this very absorbing problem of the different approaches to the organisation and structure of research and advisory services, but to end this Address I would like to refer briefly to the growing importance of farm organisation and planning in any system of advisory service at field or county levels.

It appears to me that under increasing technical and economic pressures agriculture will be forced towards greater specialisation and integration, and that we shall witness in the next 20 or 30 years the strengthening of existing Production and Marketing Boards and the establishment of others. The industry itself, separately or in co-operation with food processors, could have-as is already evident in the U.S.A. and to a less extent in this country (e.g. the broiler industry)-a significant effect on the future development of farming systems. Some of these changes will not for a number of reasons affect the small family f a m , although a more realistic attitude to the benefits that could follow from a well organised co-operative system would go some way to providing them with the advantages associated with bigger concerns. We can conclude, however, that these likely developments will make a definite impact on the farm advisory services as we know them today. The production and marketing boards, co-operatives and certainly commercial concerns (who are already heavily involved in giving advice) are likely to develop and extend

Journal of Agricultural Economics. 127 their advisory activities, but mainly on the technical side. This leaves to the county agricultural advisers the most important task of all, that of advising the farmer on how to use to the best advantage the technical advice he receives and how to balance resources and enterprises into a sound and profitable business.

I said earlier that the essential task of welding scientific, technical and economic advice into a profitable farming system is done on the farm by the farmer, and I would say that the most important and rewarding work any advisory service can perform is to assist farmers and particularly the “ small ” farmer to amve at sound and profitable management decisions. The progress already achieved in this country and some others in developing and success- fully applying management principles and techniques on the farm suggests that this is a sphere of advisory activity for which there will be a constant and continuous demand. Further, if in the future agriculture and individual farmers are to be serviced by their own organisations and commercial concerns closely connected with agriculture, the need for an independent service to advise the farmer individually or in groups on the organisation and planning of the farm as a whole will be all the greater.

In their report on “The Family Farm” Sturrock and Wallace list a number of reasons why incomes on this type of holding are very often low, and proceed to explain why and how the situation could be remedied. The reasons are familiar to us all, but the point I would make is that only after a farm management analysis covering both technical and economic considerations is it possible to asess the situation and make recommendations for improvement. To me, therefore, a further extension and development of farm planning and organisation advisory work is essential if measures to increase the viability of these farms are taken and are to be successful.

Looking further ahead, I believe that systems of farming will become fewer, simpler in many ways, more specialised and conforming more closely to dearly defined patterns, with the result that a “ group approach ” could be developed effectively. In turn, this would mean covering a much larger number of farms, particularly in the “ small farm ” group which, generally speaking, are those in most need of advice and guidance.

DISCUSSION ON MR. JONES’ PAPER. 3. G. Sturrock:

I am glad to open the discussion and pay my tribute to the clarity with which our future President has put the points at issue. I should like to pay a personal tribute to the debt we owe him as chief adviser to the Ministry on farm management. The link between the agricultural economists and the N.A.A.S. is working well, but we should not forget that when we started to offer instruction in farm management to the N.A.A.S.. some of the advisory officers looked at us askance. I t was a tricky moment and no small part of our success was due to the tact and energy of Mr. Arthur Jones.

He has raised many issues and I cannot comment on them all here. What I can do, however, is to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of some of his statementsand add some comments tha t perhaps our President might have liked to make if he had not been a civil servant.

He has discussed the various ways in which advisory work could be carried y t . At present, we have in the N.A.A.S. district officers and county officers who are the G.Ps.” of the profession and at provincial level we have the specialists. .4s he correctly says, advisory work could be organised on quite different lines or it could be supplemented by other bodies. Already we have the Sugar Beet Corporation and the quick freeze processors who have specialist advisers to deal with their own products. If need be, farmers can be indu:ed and are often,quite willing to pay for additional advice. As an example, we have the in Illinois and elsewhere in the U.S.A. A group of 40 or more farmers form an association and pay a fee of perhaps LZO to L50 a year. They have the services of a full-time farm management adviser who deals with their accounts which are used both for taxation purposes and as a measure of farm efficiency. He also gives them much individual advice and helps them in planning better farming systems. I n this case,

Farming Rings

1% Joural of Agricultural Economics. the State pays half the cost and the farmers’ fees pay the rest. There is some controversy as to whether a special advisory service to individuals should be subsidised by public funds. The cost is, however, justified on the grounds that if such farmers adopt improve: methods, their neighbours will copy them. In any case, a farmer can belong to a for only about three years-after that, he must give way to someone else.

In this country, there is certainly scope for agricultural accountants to take the initiative. When a farmer has paid for his tax accounts, i t would not cost very much more to have a proper business analysis. Some are already doing this, and Mr. Bell who is with us at this meeting is a notable pioneer.

Another field where there is sco e foi private initlative is that of time and motion studies. I t is a little doubtful wheger a labour study by itself would just iv the cost except on a fairly large farm but along with other management advice, it could be a most useful service.

Turning now to demonstration farms, we have certainly not made full use of their possibilities. At present, the managers of such farms often have a very difficult task. They must simultaneously run experiments and give a demonstration of orthodox farming. They often have far too many objectives and certainly too many masters. As a result, farming policy tends to be timid and from the economic point of view slightly old-fashioned- There is scope for additional demonstration farms to illustrate good systems of manage- ment. Theie should be a single, simple objective which should not be obscured by experiments. We have been discussing small farms. Why not have a demonstration of a large family farm to show not the minimum area required to support a family but the maximum area that they can operate ?

We are apt to think of output per man as a large farmer’s problem. In fact, it is just as much the concern of the small farmer. Recently, there was a series of articles on small farms in the Sundq Times. The firA of these described how hard the farmer had to work to earn a meagre living. It described his day-how he got up early to mix the hens’ food and let them out. There were 300 hens in several houses scattered over the farm. Why several houses ? Why scattered over the farm ? Why waste two hours a day on a tiny enterprise of this kind ? If the hens had been in a single deep litter house twenty yards from the farmhouse, his wife could have fed them in five minutes in the middle of the forenoon. This is an illustration of the way that low productivity handicaps the small farmer.

Why not provide a demonstration to show how much a family can produce on a well designed farm ? To give an income of A500 a year on a small farm, an output of about ;d1,500 to k2.000 is necessary. Could we show how one family by taking advantage of the improvement grants can have an output of k2.500 to ~3.000 a year ? Such a small farm would provide a good standard of living and be in such a strong position that it could weather any normal economic storm.

This is only one example of the uses to which demonstration farms might be put-to show economic systems of farming rather than technical details of husbandry.

Ring

Professor E . F . Naslr: I would like to join in welcoming h ~ t h u r Jones as President of the Society and to say

how well I remember those days in the Ministry and with what interest we awaited the arrival of Mr. Jones. He was described to us as an economist who did actually know his way about the farmyard, and I think today he has shown also that he has a very shrewd grasp of some of the essentially economic problems that are confronting us in our concern with the efficiency of the agricultural industry.

It seems to me that a lot of these problems lead us back to rather fundamental questions of economic organisation. For one thing the problems to which we have been directing our attention are to a very large extent problems of an agricultural system in which small farms are largely in the hands of hereditary farmers. The function of seeing that a form of property is properly utilised naturally belongs to its owner, i t seems to me, and a good deal of what we have been doing in recent years has been to weaken any incentive that the owner might have had in the old days to take such precautions as he could to see that his property was utilised as effectively as possible. Should not land ownership be something that a man can look upon as commercially worthwhile ? Do we not need to give a good deal more attention than we have, in recent years, to the reasons why it is not regarded as commercially worthwhile ? Do we not need to think a bit more about the sort of tenure system we should be moving towards in this country ? Do we not want to examine, for example. such things as the oddities of our taxation system and the way in which i t influences the actions and policies of landowners ? Do we not also need to welcome, perhaps more whole-heartedly than some of us have done, the recent weakening in the security of tenure provisions in the new Agriculture Act 7

Journal of Agricultural Economics. 129

.E. A . Bell: May I add my meed of congratulation to our new President on his very excellent

Presidential Address. I have been specially interested in what he has said and particularly in the suggestions he has made that other organisations might contribute something towards the economic advisory services of this country. I was also extremely interested in Mr. Ford Sturrock’s description of some of the things that happen in this way in the United States of America.

I am very proud of the fact that when I was a Costings Officer in Scotland after the end of the First War I had the opportunity of being trained in farm accounting and its application to management by M r . James Wyllie, lately economist in Wye College. When I thereafter entered private practice as a farm accountant I have been able, over the many years of that practice, to give what I hope has been helpful advisory service to many farmers. I think that this particular form of co-operation is envisaged by our President because in the autumn of last year he wrote a joint article with a chartered accountant which was published in all three of the professional accountants’ journals, and in that article he suggested that co-operation between the professional accountancy bodies and the economists might be of great advantage to agriculture. That, I think, is a very excellent omen of the spirit of today.

As a professional accountant I feel that we accountants are in rather a unique position, which most economists do not share, because we get the people who come t o us and do not come to them. They say, ’‘ All we want is that you should minimise our cheque to the Inland Revenue ! ” When they ikst come to us they are usually not in the least interested in the reorganisation of their farm or, in fact, even in their farm accounts and therefore we, as accountants, do get farmers with whom we can do missionary work. There is nothing that gives me, personally, greater pleasure than to go over a set,pf accounts for a farmer’s second or third year of co-operation with me and hear him say, My goodness me, I never understood before how much you could learn from farm accounts ! ”

I think I am right in saying that those who come to the economists and t o the provincial advisory services have already an interes’ in farm accounts and management. We accountants get those who are not, and because of that I think i t is extremely valuable that there should be co-operation between the economist and the professional accountants. I feel myself that it would be of great advantage to the industry if something on these lines could be organised.

S. Hooper: I am a bank manager and therefore rather out of my depth here, but I would like to

say how very much I have enjoyed the President’s talk. Owing to my interest in the finance of farming I am consulted quite a bit about our courses for potential bank managers, in the Westminster Bank. They all go through a staff college and there we do put over the fact that the agricultural advisory service can be very helpful. Many of our managers have reported that where a farmer has been going downhill financially over the years they have got in touch with the local advisory service (after consulting their customer, of course -it is rather a delicate operation but i t can be done), and then the local advisor has been able to draw up a very practical scheme which has been put over to the farmer, and in many cases has resulted in financial solvency when otherwise he was obviously heading for disaster. I would like to bring that forward as a very definite illustration of the helpful advice given by the service.

D. T. Healey: From time to time Mr. Jones said that agriculture was an industry and therefore

should be subject to the normal economic criteria of any other industry in the country. And yet I think he rather belies this idea that industry should be compared with,?griculture in much of this paper. In particular when he makes the statement that today no government here or elsewhere tolerates that kind of ruthless competition, etc.,” we had in the past. Now, competition is competition and “ ruthlessness is not involved. I t seems to me that if he had concentrated more on agriculture being an industry he would have laid more emphasis upon the last part of his paper, the part which suggests that agriculture might itself provide the advisory services which are required.

I feel sure that only when agriculture is prepared to pay for its own advice, its own economic and technical research, will those working in agriculture be willing t o accept that advice. You will see that he suggested at the beginning of his paper that farmers are reluctant to accept advice from people who are civil servants, quite understandably so, in my opinion. Denmark, the country which he mentions en passant as being that which accepted advice from its own paid people, is the country which has the highest standard of

130 Journal of Agricultural Economics. productivity and efficiency in Europe. Now I consider this extremely sigdlcant, and I would therefore think that if the agricultural industry were t o regard itself more like I.C.I. or Unilever, and finance its own internal economic and scientific research organisa- tions, i t would be willing to accept advice from them and therefore you would get the technical development which is necessary.

It is no use saying that we have large numbers of small family farms in this country and we cannot possibly get rid of them. We can get rid of them if we want to, if we want to on economic grounds. No doubt about it. But so long as this sentimentality about small’ family farm exists-“ we want t o keep them for social reasons,” and so on-so long shall we be thinking of government assistance to the industry in the form of grants that Mr. Sturrock was talking about, I would suggest that i t is time we stopped thinking about agriculture in those terms and got to grips with the problem. We should say that if the agricultural industry wants to reorganise itself, let it do so itself, and let those people go to the wall who are not economically efficient.

M . B. Jawetz: We have all been discussing this problem of advisory work in the provinces from our

own angle. We all know how many farmers there are who could make use of our advice, but we know how few there are who t ry to make use of the advice available. I suggest that to a large extent this is the result of the rather fantastic situation of the farming industry following war-time, and later, policies. There is simply not enough pressure upon the farmer to use the advice and to better himself.

For example, we have been discussing the small farmer. I am one of the people who care a lot about the small farmer, but we do not take into consideration the premium on the inefficient small farmer to remain where he is. It is much cheaper for many a man who ought to be out of farming to carry on, jus t for the sake of keeping his house which may cost something like L30, L40, &50, L60 per annum with the land and a few more or less useful buildings thrown in into the bargain. If he got out he would have to pay at least twice as much for renting a house alone.

The whole fabric of our welfare system, with its housing grants, and all the rest helps to maintain this situation. I hope there will be some move in the right direction now with the new Agriculture Act. Pressure on the inefficient farmer to pay fully economic rent would weed out the sheep from the goats much more efficiently than any superimposed system such as a qualification by diploma or degree or whatever else you could ask for as a qualification t o farm. He would be kicked out by his own inefficiency smner and safer than by any other device you could possibly imagine. Knowing this, he would soon make use of any available advice.

Dr. J . F. Duncan: In the discussion we should keep to the subject, which is the educational and advisory

approach to the efficiency of the individual farmer. It would be very easy if we could alter the whole economic set-up as so many of our critics are saying, but having an education and advisory service, how can we improve that and, in particular, how can we get it to the farmers who need it most ? We all know that the advisory service is used by the people who need i t least, and it is used least by the people who need i t most. Partly it is due to the tradition upon which we established the advisory service. The idea was that the advisor should wait to be asked, that he shouldn’t barge in and t ry to “ sell ” his advice to. the farmer. I think that is a wrong approach ; I think that the advisory service should be much more aggressive and should be prepared to sell its product to the farming community in the same way as the commercial people do. The farming community in this country d o not take enough interest in the service. It is provided for them and the farmers themselves do so very little. It would be much more successful if we could induce the farming organisations to take more interest in the work and to help in prepaxing the way to make the advisory service acceptable to the general farming community.

G . B. Clarke: I am stung to rise and speak on this paper, first of all because of the rather narrow

definition which, I feel, has been attributed to the word “ education.” I get the impression that education is here regarded as fact assimilation. Such facts to be accumulated from textbooks and the farm institutes. There are many in this audience with f a r more experience of teaching agricultural economics than I have, but my own experience has been that i t is really only after those facts have been assimilated that the task of education can, in fact, begin. To try and induce students to bring their own judgment to bear on these facts and to assimilate them i,nto a sound farming system is the point where the real problem of education starts.

Journal of Agricultural Economics. 131 The suggested split between education and advisory work is perhaps not so clear cut

as i t has been presented, and I would be prepared to accept some criticism of my function as a liaison officer if I thought, or was prepared to agree, that the advisory service were not, in fact, an educational service. My own impression of the work of the advisory service is that i t is doing one of the most constructive and useful educational functions among rural communities that is available in this country today. This is particularly so, I think, when one comes to consider the Farm Management field, which is in fact, dealing with the useful application of basic knowledge-so much for education. If Mr. Jones cares to re-think some of his comments again, he would probably be prepared to come a little way along the path with me in conceding that the advisory service, in fact, does fulfil a very important educational function.

The other point I would like to put to Mr. Jones concerns the arguments which appear in his paper to emphasise the slowness with which the farming community take up the advisory contribution that comes from the N.A.A.S., and that this is due to lack of some sort of training of the farming community. When this argument is put to farmers I think, with some justification, they are apt to retort-you may, in fact, in the advisory service and in the universities have people very highly qualified in the academic aspects of their subject, but unless you can demonstrate to us that they can in fact apply these academic concepts and make them useful in practice, then they have as many shortcomings on the practical side as we have on the academic side. I would therefore wholeheartedly support Mr. Sturrock’s plea that within the advisory service there should be some attempt to demonstrate that the academic training of the advisors is matched by equal ability to apply i t with advantage in conditions similar to those confronting the farmers.

Dr. C. Thomsen: I would like to say first how much I am appreciating this conference and the

opportunity of being with the members of your Society. I would say that comments on how to improve the efficiency of the advisory services would have been very inappropriate some years ago when your overriding purpose was to increase the production. Now that the trend has changed to more efficient production or, at least, not production at any cost, I feel much happier to speak in support of much that has already been said.

The Danish system has, I think, an advantage above most other systems, in that it has involved the farmer in the advisory work right from the beginning. I am not proposing this as the ideal system ; i t has its drawbacks as well. However, looking a t your system today, one of your most difficult problems has been how to establish contact between the farmer and the advisors coming from Government Services. I would submit that one of the ways of achieving better results would be to try to get the farmer more directly concerned with the operation of the services. One way has been indicated already, that is to let him share in the cost.

I would like to make clear here that the Danish farmer is by no means paying the total cost of research in agriculture nor of the advisory service, but he does make a contribution. What is more, he is directly concerned with the operation of i t in that the farmer committees in the farmers’ organisations decide on the appointments of advisors, and how they spend their time. This has its drawbacks, as I have said, but it does help to establish the proper relationship between the advisor and the farmer.

As Mr. Clarke has already pointed out, i t is not sufficient for the farmer to know that the man who comes along has an extra perfect academic qualification ; he wants to know something about his ability to give practical advice. There is a point here, I think, in the Danish system in that no agricultural graduate can practice unless he has had a continuous period of three to four years of practical work on the farm before he enters the university. That does help, particularly when he comes out as an advisor. He can understand the problems, he knows the language, and the words to use to make the farmer understand what it is he wants to tell him.

We have quite a number of small farmers and most of them are probably not badly off. But we have found that to help the small farmer to reach a reasonable level of efficiency you cannot rely on one advisory service for the whole of agriculture. We have, in fact, special advisory services for smallholders.

H. M . Conacher: The plight of the small farmer seems to dog this conference and there seems to be an

impression that the small farmer is an unteachable. In this country, of course, the small farmer is to a large extent the hereditary small farmer and, in the Netherlands and in Denmark he may also be the hereditary small farmer. But when we first had the lesson from Denmark rubbed into us 30 years ago, what we were told was that i t was all due to Bishop Grundig’s High Schools I We don’t seem to have had a Bishop Grundig, certainly not in Presbyterian Scotland for they have had no bishops.

132 Journal of Agricultural Economics. Let me draw an illustration from a new country. I spent a good deal of time in Canada

i n the late 30's and, as you know, the Prairie Provinces of Canada were settled somewhere towards the end of the nineteenth century under the homestead law. Now a full section was 640 acres, and a normal thing was for a new settler only to take up a quarter section, i.e. 150 acres. Within a generation the prairie farmer, farming only a quarter section had disappeared and the normal size of farms was roughly at least half a section and this, of course, was largely due to the increasing mechanisation of the industry. Now that seems to me an instance of where a new country is at an advantage as compared with an old one. There were no hereditary farmers in the Prairie Provinces and, therefore, you had a natural flow of progress. In this country I suppose we should despair of anything of that sort happening and therefore there are all these slightly artificial aids being given to keep the small farmer in being. The biggest collection of them, of course, is in the crofting districts of Scotland, and they are more or less hopeless ; I mean from the point of view of making a contribution to agriculture. They may raise some stirks to be fattened up, but there does happen to be a much more useful set of small farmers in north-east Scotland, and I am sure, being near Aberdeen, they are teachable, they are not among the unteachables.

What I am trying to point out is the desirability of getting rid of the hereditary small farmers (I exclude Wales, as there are some North Walians about). It is no good pumping all the advisory services in the country into farins unless the farms are the right size and the right kind of unit. We have in Scotland certainly a great number of 150-acre farms. I have been out of this sort of thing for years, but I wonder whether, for what used to be called mixed arable farming, 150 acres is, to use this new cant word, a " viable " unit. It may be that for mixed arable farming you ought not to have any farm less than 500 or 600 acres. That would, of course, reduce the number of farmers, but i f you had the right economic unit you would at least have a set of farmers who were near enough to the kind of capitalist mentality of big industry to be able to take in all the wisdom that the economists, and the chemists, and the geologists, and everybody else, could offer them.

I. G. Reid: It will take me less than a minute to make my point. M r . Arthur Jones says that he

is astonished a t tlie determination of Faculties of Agriculture not to include sociology and kindred subjects into the cumcula of their courses for agricultural students, some of whom will become advisory officers, because i t is so important for such officers to know the likes and dislikes and the community relationships of the people amongst whom they are working. Mr. Jones has reminded me also of the equally determined way in which the Civil Service moves these advisory officers from one district to another just as they are getting to know these likes, dislikes and community relationships and thus becoming really effective advisory officers. I am one of the lucky people who can sometimes stand on the touchline and watch the N.A.A.S. a t work, but I am sometimes also one of the unlucky people who are brought in to the mess that remains when a good advisory officer is moved. It may be for the officer's individual good because i t is the only way he can get an increase in salary, but the effectiveness of the N.A.A.S. can be reduced considerably when such moves occur.

Arlhur Jones: First of all let me thank you all very sincerely for the generous way you have accepted

this paper. May I particularly thank Mr. Sturrock for his too kind remarks about my efforts in stimulating Farm Management and for his constructive and helpful remarks in opening the discussion.

I am glad that Mr. Sturrock raised the question of associating advisory work with demonstration farms. I did not pursue that line because of the time factor and for other more delicate reasons. I have found, however, that in other countries demonstration farms properly run have contributed a great deal to the effectiveness of advisory work, particularly among small farmers. Whether that would be practicable and possible in this country I leave entirely to you

I might have known something about farms and farming when I first joined the Ministry, but I must say that I have learned a great deal about economics from my work with Nash and Kirk.

This matter of heredity in small farms is a very serious problem and how to tackle i t without interfering with the rights of the individual I do not know. I am very glad that Mr. Bell supports the kind of work I try to do in connection with farm accountants and farm managers. I do honestly believe, very strongly believe, that if we can get a closer relationship with accountants and bankers that we will be doing not only the industry, but individual farmers a great deal of good.

On the question M r . Cooper raised, I must say in fairness to the Service that it will depend on whether the farmer wants to come to the Advisory Service. We must not have

Journal of Agricultural Economics. 133 the banker telling us what to do. It must be the farmer that comes to us and asks us to give him a farm plan after he has discussed his problem with his bank manager. It is only fair to make i t quite clear that we are not to be controlled in any way as to the advice offered. The farmer himself will discuss with his bank the financial implications, if any.

Mr. Healey made some very pointed remarks about keeping small farms in operation purely for social reasons ; but I think Mr. Kirk put the real issues on that question before us last night. I do not want to follow him this morning. If you took the strictly economic point of view, of course, you could get rid of many of these people without any difficulty at all, but in that connection and in relation to what Mr. Conacher said later, I have no doubt at all that many of the so-called small farmers in this country are-to use that fashionable phrase-“ viable ” and teachable. On the other hand, admittedly many are quite non- viable and unteachable. We have got to get on to the middle road and take a balanced view of this economic and social problem.

Mr. Jawetz mentioned the need for raising rents as a means of raising efficiency. If this were done it would then be necessary to have more control over land tenure. What I want to see (if the farms are, as Mr. Duncan and Mr. Conacher said, of an economic size) is that such farmers are provided with every opportunity to be taught or to be advised so that they can remain farmers and intelligent members of society.

I am very glad indeed that my old friends, Dr. Duncan and Mr. Conacher, took part in the discussion. I would agree with Dr. Duncan that the Advisory Service really must sell its advice. I think there is, and there has been, a reluctance on our part to do this. I don’t know the cause, but there is a tendency to say that we have got to be very careful of what we say. In a technical service, and as long as we remain a technical service, believing passionately in what we are trying to teach, we ought to have no qualms at all in saying and selling what we believe in. I know perfectly well that as civil servants, there are certain conventions to be observed. On the other hand, because we are civil servants, I feel that sometimes we are not as free in our criticism as we should be.

I am glad that Mr. Clarke raised the question of definition of education. Mr. Harry made the same point to me some time ago. I am not saying that the Advisory Service is not an educational service, but I say, and I still will say, that its main job is to advise the farmer. Inasmuch as advice has an educational content, and it has ; then of course it is educational. I want to see the standard of education of all farmers raised to such a level that advisers will not have to give vocational primary education, but rather, as I said later on in my paper, to offer management advice that leads to a profitable farm enterprise.

We were all delighted with Dr. Thomsen’s contribution, and I am very glad to see him here as I know personally of the excellent work he has done in O.E.E.C. Let me make it quite clear ; I did not say that the Danish farmers paid all the cost of the advisory services. Of course they do not. But they do take such an active part in i t and pay a high proportion of the cost. I am old-fashioned enough to say that what you pay for you appreciate all the more.

There are, of course, as Mr. Conacher said. unteachables, but I think that Bishop Grundig did a great deal to make the farmers in Denmark teachable. We know that in Canada they have gone from a quarter section to half a section and more, and that is unquestionably due to the fact that they have got no traditions or anything like that to hold them back. It is not so easy in this country. We have small family farms and the inherited customs and traditions that go with them. What we have got to try and do is to see what educational and other forms of help can do to raise the standards of farming. If such assistance is not successful they should give way to others. It is no good pumping advice or money on to small farms if they are not of an economic size.

Finally, Mr. Reid referred to moving people from one area to another. I a m not going to dogmatise on this issue ; it is a difficult problem. There is no question at all that the people who get the best men do not want to get rid of them ; they want to keep them. What we &re trying to do is to see that our men get a wide training and broad experience of different districts so that they become more competent officers. The last word has not been said on this matter and I am uncertain myself jus t where I stand. Before the war there were quite a number of people in the counties who could not be moved, with the result that education and advice suffered. The converse is, of course, true. On the whole, I do think that.the present mobility ensures better men and better service. All of US want to see a prosperous and efficient agriculture and my final plea is that we do not become hidebound in our approach as far as research, education and advisory structures are concerned.