I have been long enough in this House, Sir, to realise that if one does not catch your eye before the Minister gets up, it is as well to keep on trying. I am encouraged also by what the right hon. Gentleman has said about land fertility. I think we all remember that when the Prime Minister addressed us last week he drew aside the veil to some extent at any rate on this vital question as to whether or not the people of these Islands would have enough food to fill their stomachs. In any event the German people seem to rely more on the weapon of starvation than upon any other. It is a melancholy reflection that if we had appreciated, in the years before the war, the wisdom of building up a strong, healthy British agriculture, if we had realised the folly of relying entirely upon imported food-stuffs instead of listening to the cry of cheap food, we would have had the loss of fewer gallant sailors being mourned to-day, more munitions in this country, more rations and more food to eat. From the agricultural point of view, we would have found our acres mobilised ready for war. They are nothing like mobilised to-day. On the one hand, we have masses of acres of derelict land and, on the other, we have a great deal of the kindlier lands working overtime. I want to deal chiefly with that point.

The reservoir of our supplies is at home. I do not think that anyone can deny that the right hon. Gentleman has succeeded in a very difficult task. I do not wish to criticise his policy in any fractious spirit of complaint but rather with a desire to help, and I would like to take this opportunity of paying a tribute, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate, to his predecessor who laid the foundation of his tillage programme. To-day we are making a prodigious effort to produce the maximum amount of food from the soil of Britain, and with some success, but we may have to go on doing it for many a long day yet, and it is with our sustained war-time effort that I am concerned. I, personally, as a farmer do not believe that we can stand the pace unless we pay more attention to two things—first, to the needs of the soil itself and, secondly, to the need for a comprehensive cropping plan, a plan which will give us more collaboration between Government Departments and the industry. I do not see to-day any real evidence that there is such co-operation; at any rate, I do not find this particular matter in the forefront of our food production policy. We are called upon to increase our efforts and the response of the agricultural community to the appeal of the Prime Minister will instantly and whole-heartedly be given, but whether he likes it or not, the British farmer to-day has ploughed up a very considerable portion of his total arable acreage.

Who is this farmer who is doing this job of work for the nation? He is the livestock farmer, the backbone of our whole agriculture, whose cattle and sheep have gone before the plough. As the years go on he will find, more and more, two and even three crops of stubble on his hands for which there is no adequate supply of farmyard manure, nor does he feel that behind the Government programme there is any real cropping plan to which he can turn for guidance. He sees an enormous area of stubble on the one hand, fewer livestock and plenty of straw, but the manure will not go round. From my own experience—because I am one of these farmers—we are desperately in need at the moment of a real cropping plan behind our coming programme. Many agriculturists are seriously concerned because of the very heavy drain on our soil fertility. It is all very well for pundits and scientists to talk about artificials, but you cannot go on using artificials ad lib. I have farmed long enough to realise that the forces of nature cannot be altered. Nature very often supplies her own medicine, and one of them is farmyard manure. Despite what the scientists say, nine farmers out of ten to-day will tell you that soil fertility cannot be maintained without farmyard manure. If you do not believe that, why are farmers paying fantastic prices at markets to get any livestock? The answer is that they must maintain the fertility of their land.

May I give an example to the Minister? Suppose I was asked to purchase at the end of this war either of two farms "A" or "B". Farm "A" has carried a heavy head of stock and has been properly manured with farmyard manure. Farm "B" has been artificially manured, and, all things being equal, I would be a fool if I bought Farm "B". This year we must maintain as well as increase our tillage acreage, and that will mean in many cases that not only will you have two corn crops running on many farms, but a succession of three corn crops on many farms. Owing to the shortage of farmyard manure, it makes the business of lime supply still more important. I believe this question of soil fertility is the most important single item in the realm of our food production to-day. What are the Government doing to meet the position? The remedy seems to me to be to adopt a balanced system of ley fanning, but you cannot do this without a cropping plan. The present policy seems to be to call upon the farmer to plough a specific acreage, but there is no real guidance or direction to that farmer except in very special cases where agricultural committees are not particularly pleased with what he is doing.

The general cropping programme requires more direction in relation to our national needs; without such directional guidance our food supply is bound to be haphazard. The Minister found himself with a sufficiency of seed potatoes last year to meet the greatly increased potato acreage, but no one can say that that was other than a fluke. I do not think anyone will deny that to plough up millions of acres of grass is one thing, but to plan what we are to do with these acres years ahead is quite another. So far as I am aware, there is no plan. If there is, I imagine we would know all about it in the country. Finally, if the Minister is about to encourage a system of sowing down, we will have to sow down plough-sick arable land, we will have to sow down marginal land that has had one crop, and we will have to sow down 1939 ploughed-up grass. If that policy is approved by the Government, a considerable demand for grass seeds will arise. If the grass seed are there, why do not the Government control its price? At the present time, there is no control whatever over the price of grass seed.

I agree with what has been said about our having reached the peak of our cereal production in 1941. I want to make another appeal to my right hon. Friend to consider the question of putting forward a more comprehensive cropping plan, a plan divorced entirely from acres and built up on our essential needs on the one hand and soil fertility on the other, and worked on a regional basis. Such a plan would, of course, involve rotational farming, and I cannot see how rotational farming could be brought in unless we had a cropping plan behind it. The county committees have done wonderful work, and I would like to pay a tribute to them, but anyone who has been in touch with them realises that quite a few of them have been bitten by the acre bug. They have been forcing fanners to plough up large tracts of land simply to get the acreage. In many cases, they have forced them to plough up what we call in Scotland marginal land. The yield of this land is in many cases completely uneconomic. Perhaps the Secretary of State for Scotland will agree with me, but in any case I will give one example of the difficulty, which has a direct bearing on the new increase of wages to £3 a week. On marginal land a farmer can produce four quarters of oats per acre, which is a reasonable yield for such land, and at £2 a quarter, the gross return per acre is £8. On good land a farmer can grow eight quarters per acre, giving a yield of £16 per acre, a difference of £8 gross per acre. In the case of marginal land, the rent is probably 10s. an acre, whereas the rent for the better land is probably 30s., so that there is a difference of only £1 per acre in rent, making a difference of £7 in the gross return per acre between the two sorts of land. The fanner having this marginal land cannot plough it up economically unless the Government raise the price of the produce he is going to sell; nor can such a farmer stand up to the increase in wages to £3 a week unless something is done about prices. Everybody wants to see higher wages, but the small marginal farmer cannot meet the wage of £3 a week out of present prices owing to the low yield per acre.

I want now to say a word or two about sheep. I feel that I am entitled to say something about sheep, because there are 640,000 of them in my Constituency. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Argyll. (Major McCallum) has 670,000 of them in his constituency. If these sheep were arranged in single file they would stretch from John o' Groats to the spot where the Secretary of State is now sitting and 50 miles back on the road to Scotland. Therefore, I am entitled to speak about hill sheep. These sheep come from the hills. They consume no imports. They utilise enormous areas of land which are quite incapable of contributing in any other way to the war effort. Since the war began, we have been told again and again that shipping space must be conserved, and therefore, it is right that we should produce from the heather valuable food for the nation if it can be done.

Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, for whom I have the greatest admiration, stated in this House at the beginning of the war that the only source for increasing the supply of meat in this country lay in our hill sheep; he said that because they need no imports whatsoever. Have we made any real attempt to carry into practice what he directed? No one in touch with the position could say that we have done anything of the kind. The Secretary of State for Scotland will probably announce shortly the amount of subsidy to be given to the hill-sheep farmers. That is a policy of restriction and a return to the old policy of "faith, hope and charity." Why does this industry have to ask for charity? That is the question everyone is asking. Everybody knows that we have had storms, but the hill-sheep industry does not ask for a guarantee against acts of God. This subsidy is nothing less than an admission that the Government have failed in the past to give the hill-sheep producer an economic price for his product. It is a form of sick payment, and, unless we can get away from this idea of public assistance and get down to solving the problem in its economic aspects, the Government will be guilty of neglecting the only source from which an increase in the production of meat can come during this war. I suggest that the Government will never get the best from the industry with a policy of subsidising. Everyone knows that a subsidy will be here to-day and gone tomorrow. The question is, How can the hill-sheep industry be kept alive, nourished and expanded? I quite realise that hon. Members wish to get away, and I have no intention, of delaying them, but I ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, when considering the economic aspect of the hill-sheep industry, to bear in mind that we do not feel that a solution can be found by granting subsidies. I hope the Government will look into this question at the earliest possible moment.