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Show British Laborites Propose Drastic Farm Regulation By BAUKIIAGE Sews Analyst and Commentator. WXTJ Service, 1616 Eye Street, N. W., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. One by one Brit-Eln Brit-Eln is nationalizing her basic industries. indus-tries. What about farming? Agriculture was Britain's largest industry right up to 1939 but before r r: the war Britain produced less than a third of the food and feed the islands consumed. con-sumed. By 1943 they were producing pro-ducing 70 per cent of the wartime war-time rations for their own people, plus the Allied armies and refugees, refu-gees, within their borders. Government Baukhage contro1 was s'rlf but it worked. And the British with their socialist government do not intend to let it slip back if regulation can stop it. To that end a bill is now before parliament par-liament which would bring the American Amer-ican farmer down to Washington with a pitchfork in each hand. The "two pillars" of the new government gov-ernment policy are "stability and efficiency." ef-ficiency." The agriculture bill would create stability by guaranteeing prices. It provides: (1) That the prices and other market mar-ket factors of wheat, barley, oats, rye, potatoes and sugar beets be fixed in the year before these crops are to be harvested. (2) Prices and other factors affecting af-fecting fat stock, milk and eggs, to be announced for a period of one year and also minimum prices and other conditions, including quantities, quanti-ties, for a further period of two years. Consequently the producer r .. ...... ..- w..y.-j(prf - i i. : . - - ,,;-, . i ,.y ; '..-.! ; "" - ' . : ; i 'ffl--r . f A V f f ' George Casely is one of the farm- ers who has increased his production produc-tion on 50 acres in Devon, England. With daughter, Sylvia, he is pitching pitch-ing hay. of fat stock, milk and eggs will know actual prices and other conditions of sale a year in advance, and minimum mini-mum prices and conditions (which include any quantitative limitations) for two years ahead. There is planning and regulation for you! "Stability, however," gays Britain's Brit-ain's minister of agriculture, "is not enough." And then he goes after efficiency with foot, horse and guns. Two requisites for efficiency are promotion of research into farming problems and an organization which will provide the individual farmer with technical advice. Very good. The United States government does a pretty good job on that score. The point is: What does the British government ask in return for what it intfTids to offer? "Roth the farmer and the landowner land-owner have parts to play," it says and points out that "the rules of good husbandry require the farmer to maintain his holding at a reasonable reason-able standard of efficient production, produc-tion, bearing In mind cleanliness of the land, maintenance of fertility and freedom from disease and pests. The rules of good estate management manage-ment require the landowner to maintain main-tain his estate with adequate buildings, build-ings, drainage, ditches and hedges, so that the occupier can be an efficient ef-ficient producer." And that is not merely suggested in the bill, It Is required. The farmer farm-er or the landowner will live up to these conditions or he will lose his land. The first step against an offender of-fender is to place thern under formal for-mal supervision after they have had a chance to state their case. The next step will be to Issue spc. cine instructions as to what Is to bo done again giving the offender the opportunity to state his case. If the offender is a landowner a tha expense of carrying out the orders exceeds the annual rent of the land, he can appeal to the agricultural land tribunal. The third step would be dispossession dispos-session in 12 months or sooner. A landowner would have to submit a forced sale; a landowner-occupier might be forced to rent to an approved ap-proved tenant; a tenant's tenancy would be terminated. The law doesn't end there. It deals with the past and the future as well as the present. Experiments will be made to adjust farm boundaries bound-aries made many hundreds of years ago and the intent is to prevent the splitting up of farms into uneconomic uneconom-ic divisions. Stability, efficiency. Liberty? Mystery of the Whooping Crane As a whooping crane detective I am not worth a whoop. This perhaps per-haps is natural since I have no credentials cre-dentials as a naturalist. But in the course of leading the Fish and Wild Life service on a wild crane chase I encountered some interesting facts. This is the story: While I was in Florida I heard some convincing descriptions of whooping cranes, said to be found on a nearby plantation. I knew the whooping crane rapidly was becoming becom-ing extinct and I had never heard of any of them having been seen in Florida so, when I returned to Washington, I immediately communicated commu-nicated my "discovery" to Mr. Lincoln, Lin-coln, ornithologist of the Fish and Wild Life service of the department of the interior. He was very polite and patient and even agreed to ask Mr. Kelsey, one of the department's representatives, to interview my wife, who was still in Florida, as to the reports which she had first-hand. It wasn't long before I heard from my wife that as a result of further consultation with the Audubon Bird Book and a very short conversation with Kelsey. there was unanimous agreement that the cranes were not whnnpers but must be sandhills. It's an old story to the service but they take no chances and run down all clues. Even if the only proof the "discoverer" has is the earnest insistence in-sistence that: "I know it was a whoopin' crane because I heard him a'whoopin'." Part of the reason for these meticulous metic-ulous inquiries is that the service Is at present conducting a survey in hope of locating the nesting place of the whooping cranes. This spot never hn heen Irtwr.A hut it filrr.r.ct certainly is somewhere In Canada. Lincoln doubts that there are more than 50 of these birds alive today although there are records showing that the skies over the western plains once were darkened by the flights of hundreds, even thousands, of them. If, like the passenger pigeon, they disappear entirely. North America will have lost its tallest tall-est as well as one of its most beautiful beau-tiful birds. The whooping crane stands over four feet tall, has a wingspread of , seven feet and flies with neck and legs out straight. It has white plumage except for black tips on the wings; has black legs and yellow bill and a bare red crown. A little less than two years ago National Audubon society approached ap-proached the government and offered of-fered to furnish funds for the working out of a joint survey, the purpose of which was to locate the breeding grounds and other points 1 where the cranes gathered in order to arrange for their further protec- j tion. The one place In the United States where cranes are known to pass their summers Is the national wild life refuge near Corpus Christi, Tex. No nest of a whooping crane Is known to have been seen within 20 years or perhaps longer. The birds-have birds-have been observed passing over the Dakotas. Manitoba find Saskalrho- wan and It Is taken for granted that somewhere north of these points the nesting grounds are located. None has been discovered although one government plane find n plane belonging to a collaborator (a col- laborator Is a person paid by some private Institution but who Is permitted per-mitted to use department of the Interior In-terior facilities) hfive flown fiver mnny thousands of square miles in thin area.) Every possible efTort has been made to locate the nest for it Is here that protection is most lin-portnrit. |