Mr R.S. Hudson, Minister of Agriculture, Announces a Four Year Plan for Agriculture, at Middlesex Guildhall, on May 26th 1943.
Last Autumn I asked for an additional 600.000 acres of wheat.
That was a stiff demand; well it has been achieved, nay, more than achieved.
I now confidently expect to get well over half as much again.
Indeed, this year we shall have doubled our per war wheat acreage.
Nor is that all, Our acreage under other grains and all kinds of corn are now used for your bread, also shows a substantial increase.
That is a great achievement…..
So much for the present. You are also wondering about the future….
I said that we were at present working on a Four Year Plan for agriculture, which would take us up to the harvest of 1947, you may well ask, “When are your demands on us going to cease or let up?”
Quite frankly, I can’t tell you.
It’s unsafe in this world to prophesy.
If you insist, however, on a guess, I should say not before 1947 at the earliest.
For even if victory in Europe comes before then the demands for food from our own soil will not abate.
Ships will still be needed for other vital purposes.
The Japs must still be beaten.
The starving peoples of Europe comes be fed.
Please remember that there are still over ten million acres of permanent grass in England and Wales.
Not all of this, of course is ploughable.
But a large part of it can and should be ploughable in the next few years….
Much of our present arable has given of its utmost and borne two, or even three, white straw crops in succession.
It needs a rest, but our present tillage area must not drop.
We must still go on producing the maximum amount of crops for human and animal consumption.
We must therefore adopt a policy of turning over more grassland for cropping while gradually while gradually reseeding to leys of varying duration our more exhausted plough land.
Such a policy is really common sense if we are to preserve the fertility of our soil.
It is in fact the gradual implementation of the ley farming policy which I believe must be the future basis of British agriculture over a large part of the country.
I want to see every farm in every county with a plan worked out so that by 1947 every acre of land that can and should be ploughed on that particular farm shall have been turned over…
What will be effect? The most important will be that we shall have millions of acres of land under leys of varying duration one six years old.
Those leys will be vastly more productive than the millions of acres of permanent grass that they will have displaced.
That leads us directly to the other half of our Four Year Plan, namely our livestock police.
We shall require a large head of both cattle and sheep to consume the additional grass.
It is my ambition to see also a very material improvement in the quality of those cattle and sheep….
Given ordinary luck in the weather (a factor I can’t control) and reasonable supplies of fertilizers (a factor I hope to be able to control), we ought to be able, year by year, to increase the yield from the existing arable and tillage area.
Add to that the improvement in livestock and livestock products, which I visualize and I predict that when 1947 comes the agriculture of this country will never before have been so healthy and efficient….
