I have listened to the previous Speaker with very great interest and attention, and I must, say, so far as the countryside is concerned, I agree with his conclusion that we have taken nearly as many men from the farms as we can afford to take if we are going to maintain our present cropping system, and produce next year an increased amount of food. School children may be all right to help to take the potatoes up; the women land workers have done good work, but they are not a substitute for many of the highly skilled men yet essential if we are to produce the harvest required in the coming season. I wish to say one or two things about the extent of ploughing up. I think that on all sides of the House the opinion has been expressed that we have almost reached the limit of our policy in ploughing up. I know there are Members in this House who will recollect what happened during the last war. We compelled farmers to plough up land that never ought to have been ploughed up—cold, wet, badly drained—which never actually produced a crop that paid for the ploughing up, the tilling and the sowing of seed. Indeed, I have seen, and other Members must have seen, crops sown on land ploughed up this year that, so far as harvesting is concerned, would not pay for the cutting of it.

I think the Minister should take into consideration this factor, that with the limited amount of manures—I have no information with regard to artificial manures, of which there may be plenty, but artificial manure is not all that is required, but only part of it—with the limited amount of skilled labour available, he should leave it to the judgment of the war agricultural committees as to whether it would be wise, considering those aspects, and the machine position, that further ploughing up should be done on some of this land. Some of us are doubtful if it will produce anything so far as this present war is concerned, and I think that the decision should be left largely to the committees. In my own district we have a very fine agricultural committee, comprised of men who know their job and have done it thoroughly, and whose efforts have brought thousands of acres into active cultivation that in the past have not been brought into cultivation. Some of the results have been very fine. I have had a personal experience. The Minister has dined within a stone's throw of some land I ploughed up on which nothing had been grown for 60 years. No man has ever known it grow anything. It was ploughed up last back-end. In spring it nearly broke one's heart to look at it. However, we persevered and planted it, and that piece of land of about seven acres of the worst land, which was considered hopeless land, grew 50 tons of potatoes, over seven tons to the acre. I think that, so far as growing on this land for the first few years is concerned, the results are likely to be due to the fact that for 60 years the grass every winter has rotted, and as a result there is the humus in the soil. When that is taken out of it something else is required, or that land will go back. In my own view the Minister has gone really to the limit of ploughing up.

Mention has been made of the 60s. minimum wage for agricultural workers. I remember taking part in a Debate in March, 1938, in which I said, much to the displeasure of friends on this and the other side of the House, that save and until the agricultural labourer's wage was brought up to something nearer the level of that of the rest of the labouring people of this country, we should never solve the problem of the countryside, because if there was any character in a man he would leave the countryside and go where better money was to be made. He did so, and the result is that the countryside has been starved of some of the best brains. I said something else, and I am happy to see that I am now in good company. At that time I was an outsider. It was that, save and until you put a price level on to the primary commodities grown by the farmer, you can never hope to make the agricultural labourer's wage equal to those of the rest of the community. For the life of me I can never understand why anybody should object to a proper price level for farm commodities. Take every other commodity made and sold in this country. You never hear a voice on the other side of the House object to a proper manufacturer's price being put on to the commodity, and to a retail price being put on to it to the consumer. Why that cannot be done with regard to the main products of agriculture I fail to understand. All it requires is the will, and it will have to be done if we are to bring that confidence to agriculture which is so necessary in order that the farmer may plan ahead.

Some representative farmers, substantial men in different parts of the country, are in London this week. They say that it is all very well putting a price level now on to these various commodities, but that what they would like is to look a little into the future. You can easily give a political answer and say that we would all like to do that, but the farmer, so far as the planning of his particular industry and economy are concerned, does like some assurance, in view of his past experience, that, say, for a period of five or seven years, he will be able to look ahead to plan his policy. He could buy machinery and stock his farm and go on with confidence if he thought that for something like the next five or seven years a price level was to be put on to the various commodities he grows.

I wish to say one thing which I think has not been said yet. I had experience some years ago of a big estate on which there was a number of farms. I went on to these farms and found no water supply of any sort, not even for the cattle. Milk from this estate went into one of the biggest cities in this country. There were out-of-date shippens, with bad roofs and no ventilation. Everybody will tell you now that there should be some windows in the shippens. There was not a stable floor which could really be called a floor. There was no door under which a man could not creep. Everything was in a state of dilapidation. I am not one of those who think that the rents of farms have been unduly high. As a matter of fact, some of the farmers would be less energetic if you gave them the farms; if you make them pay rent they have to try to get the rent out of it somehow. But pressure should be brought to bear on the landlords to put the farm buildings into a proper state of repair and to conform to whatever standard is considered by the war agricultural committees to be a reasonable one. The farm buildings in which cows are tied up during the winter time and the other buildings on the farms are just as much agricultural implements as are the ploughs.

The Minister should take steps to see that some of the prosperity which is being brought back to agriculture is spent on putting these buildings into a proper state of repair. In one case an estate agent asked a farmer—I will not mention names; if I did the man would be known to some Members of this House—how long it was since the place was painted. The farmer said, "I have been here 40 years, and it has not been painted in my time." The dilapidation on that farm was terrible. One of the Acts that we have placed on the Statute Book made it difficult for a good landlord to get rid of a bad tenant. Things are now different if the war agricultural committees are doing their duty. Some comments have been made about the diligence which the war agricultural committees show in putting men out of their farms. I have known of one or two cases in my Division which I think have been amply justified, but some farmers have fallen on evil days. Some small farmers may have lost a cow or a horse or two. In fact, in some cases I have been instrumental in getting a man put on his feet again when a lot of bad luck seems to have come to him in the space of a year or two. Where a war agricultural committee knows that a man has had bad luck, I think it would be justified in helping him to get on his feet again.

I, like the hon. member opposite, think that the present is not an appropriate time for a decision on the question of the ownership of land, but it is important that we should make the utmost use of the land which is available and produce the greatest possible amount of food, including meat. I see the Minister of Agriculture and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food sitting together. I do not want to play one off against the other, but I understand that much of the feeding stuff in the country is deteriorating—cotton cake in particular. Some of this has been stored for months, sometimes in large quantities. A week ago last Thursday I was approached on the subject by a deputation at Brigg. I think that a small amount, at any rate, of this feeding stuff should be released to augment that which the farmers have in their possession and the roots which are used in the feeding of cattle. This has been an interesting Debate, and I congratulate the Minister on having come so well out of it, but I urge him to make some pronouncement as to either a five-year or a seven-year plan for agriculture, in order to give it confidence and enable it to make its fullest possible contribution.