12 Agricultural Economics Society.

DISCUSSION ON AIR. SCOLA'S P A P E R .

Prof. Edgar Thomas : I should like to thank Mr. Scola very much indeed for his very useful paper. It is

entirely appropriate that a paper on this important and difficult subject should come from Scotland for, without a doubt, more work has been done on it by our colleagues in Scotland than anywhere else.

I would like to raise one or two points. The first point is that you have been con- cerned with a classification of farms and not a classification of farmers. I quite understand why this should be so. Nevertheless, I am intrigued to note that the nomenclature which you have used is the same as the one we used south of the Border although the basis -for our classification was the status of the farmer rather than the status of the farm. hIy colleague, Mr. Elms, and I were first responsible for this nomenclature when we used i t in our survey of Buckinghamshire farms in 1936.

The point is very important because there is a fundamental difference in the classi- fication obtained when these two approaches are used. I suggest that the classification obtained on the basis of the status of the farmer would give a very different picture from that obtained on the somewhat mechanical basis of applying theoretical labour require- ments, e.g. this farm should give full-time employment, that one part-time employment, and so on. The matter is important because it touches on the non-commercial elements in agriculture. These non-commercial factors are becoming increasingly significant and we do want to know for all kinds of purposes-and especially for the implementation of subsidy policies and general relief to farmers-the number of farmcrs who depend on their farms for their employment and income.

I was interested to see that you have carried your classification so far as to include the part-time and the spare-time groups. I suggest that these groups have little significance apart from the status of the farmer : they do not apply to farms as such. When we used this classification we had two types of spare-time farms depending entirely on the differing status of their occupiers-I don't know what you have clone about this complication.

I take it that the Scottish agricultural returns do show the number of full-time employees on the farms at the time of the census. Did you test your own theoretical classification by these actual returns ? Incidentally, I am inclined t o think it would be more realistic not to take one man as your minimum labour unit b u t one man and his wife, the classic unit for farm work.

I was also interested to notice that ultimately your basis of classification is a farming basis, i.e. a classification according to farming types and farming systems. I appreciate that you had no alternative. It is a great pity that we have not got in our statistics the same type of information about major products and sources of income which they get in the farming censuses in North America. I think it is right to remember, however, that our farmers have never been asked to give this information and my view is that it would be forthcoming if it was asked for. I t is information of the greatest importance. Indeed one of the chief values of a classification of farms is the light it can throw on the extent of joint-products in agriculture.

The case of milk may be taken as an important illustration. We want to know the number of farms that are mainly dependent on milk, the number where milk is of secondary importance, and the number where milk is combined with all kinds of other products. Until we have this information we simply cannot forecast what is likely to be the influence of price changes on the supply of milk. I t would help to use not only the June returns but other available statistics, e.g. those of the Milk Marketing Board. My colleague, Mr. Tuck, carried out a pilot experiment recently for the Southern Region of the Milk Marketing Board using the Board's records as well as the June returns. I t was a step towards defining representative farms and getting a much clearer picture of the real structure of the farming end of the milk industry.

I was also intrigued by your frank statement that the number of unclassified farms was surprisingly small, largely because you were determined that i t should not be other- wise. I would seriously suggest, however, that this attitude is perhaps not the best to adopt in any attempt to classify farms. We need to be much more flexible in dealing with farms than we are in dealing with other statistics. I don't know of any serious statistical objection to putting many farms in more than one farming-type group, and that would often be a more realistic way of dealing with them. I am sure it would help to construct the picture of the economic structure of the industry which we so badly need.

Finally, I cannot refrain from referring to your equally frank statement that all the work on the Scottish classification was done in the office. I can only hope that our friends from Whitehall have taken due note. It may be that this is one indication of the advantages to be obtained from a measure of devolution in this small island !

Proceedings of Conjerence. 1 3

P. M. Scola. I should like to thank Professor Thomas for his very kind remarks in starting off

the discussion and apologise for having, in my paper, seemed, almost deliberately, to leave out any reference to our predecessors in this task. We have been preceded by Professor Thomas in his classic work and in Scotland we followed the 1927 classification which was not issued to the public because by the time it was possible to publish, it was out of date. We do not wish to claim originality for our work but we would like to claim that it has some interest in that it has been carried through to a conclusion, including the publication of the report, and we hope i t may provide a framework for further studies.

As far as the question of part-time and spare-time farms is concerned I would say. that although we have used similar terms to those used by Professor Thomas, we were not thinking of quite the same things. The distinction can be made clear by Professor Thomas’ remarks on spare-time farms, some of which, in his classification, were quite large. That seems quite reasonable, for if Lord Nuffield has a farm. presumably he is a spare-time farmer although he may work a thousand acres of good land. We mean by spare-time farm, a piece of land on which the amount of work required is only enough to keep a man employed in his spare time. I t is a pity that our terms were SO similar but the essence of the matter is that Professor Thomas dealt with part- and spare-time jarmers, while we considered part- and spare-time farms. So f a r as checking the question of the full-timeness or part-timeness of the farms is concerned it is true that the Agricultural Returns do give the number of workers employed but it is not unknown for farmers to complete the return inaccurately, for they do not always grasp just what is required under this heading.

As to farmers giving information about the products which they sell, I believe that we have powers under the Agriculture Act to ask such questions of farmers and I share Professor Thomas’ view that they would not objcct to giving us data on this subject. Questions of that kind have already been asked in Scotland-for instance, there was an enquiry into milk sales conducted through the medium of the quarterly Returns.

On the point of joint production, there again I am in entire agreement. Our classi- fication divided farms into many different types, but there is plenty of scope for breaking down the classification still further.

Finally, on the question of the unclassified group, I think you will agree that I was frank with you. We did have a surprisingly small group of unclassified farms. Most of these were in the process of transition a t the time. Some of the more difficnlt ones were dairy farms which happened to have no cows at the timc. Others included farms with large numbers of poultry and yet were not sufficiently specialised to be called poultry farms.

I t . B. Jones: I should like to congratulate Mr. Scola for reading this paper. I t is undoubtedly

an extremely difficult and complex subject. I am rather of the opinion that he has been too modest concerning the values of a classification of this sort. It is, I feel, extremely important to us in our work to be able to define our universe by eliminating the part-time farms and the non-agricultural land which occurs in all parts of the country. It is also a very big step forward to identify and label the part-time and the spare-time farmers. We have to do so much with our resources that we must concentrate our efforts on those farms and farmers who are dependent on farming for the main part of their livelihood. It is quite clear, of course, that farming conditions are very different in Scotland when compared with England and Wales. We are particularly interested in this work of economic classification in the East Midland Province and we have plans on foot to tackle the problem here. We have done what is in a sense a pilot investigation, limited so f a r to the farms in our farm management sample, and it has proved almost impossible to apply the standards and the criteria which are used in Scotland to farming conditions in this East Midland Province. The Scottish criteria applied directly failed to give consistent and logical results in too many cases.

I think the progress made so far does show that a reasonable classification is possible. I won’t say much more than that a t this time. We are fairly confident that we can carry out a classification, and we are quite confident that when we have done the work that i t will be of immense value to us. The work we have done so far does arouse very con- siderable doubt about the value of the type-of-farming-area approach. I felt that Mr. Scola was being very kind to that approach. I t is quite clear from our work that some of the area type groups disappear into six or more economic type groups. The National Farm Survey Report shows that in a predominantly dairy group nearly 15 per cent. of the farms have no COWS at all. Although the Scottish classification is a national classi- fication for Scotland it is not necessary to await the national classification Of farms in

14 Agricultural Economics Society.

England and Wales. Regional classifications could be of very great value and have quite a broad common basis which would make them of considerable value from a national point of view.

Mr. Scola did not make any reference in his paper to the possible value of this type of work for further use in farm management studies. We are attempting, in making our classification. to devise a system which can be applied either by farmers or advisory officers on the basis of farm information which is readily available. We hope when we have carried our work to a proper stage that we can set out a formula which will lead farmers or advisory officers along the right path so that they can classify farms with reasonable accuracy. The next step, having made a classification, is to attempt to develop some standards of efficiency and output which are applicable to these type groups on a regional basis which is not too wide. If the approach is made on a fairly local basis it should be possible to set up standards which taken in conjunction with a farm classfication will be useful t o farmers and to advisory officers. I don’t feel that it is too optimistic to look forward to the time when an advisory officer can classify a farm according to its type, and be able to turn to some source or other to find what production, what level of return, can reasonably be expected from a farm of that type and size.

I appreciate that there is immense variation between farms even within type groups, but these differences have been exaggerated, and the points common to fazms of particular types have not been emphasised sufficiently. By this sort of approac- can establish comparative measures which will be extremely useful to those working in the field.

Dr. J. R. Raeburn: I should like to thank Mr. Scola for his paper. and especially for the quantitative

information in it. My d&culty is that I should like still more. Has Mr. Scola frequency distributions to show whether or not his definitions are the

most appropriate? I feel a little suspicious when I hear a Civil Servant say that the procedure has been arbitrary but the results are very good. In particular, can the definitions of ’‘ dairy ” and other types of farming on a “ choice of product ” basis be shown to be really appropriate? Or are the frequency distributions such that ayy definitions ar: inevitably more arbitrary than they appear when general labels such as are applied ?

Again, in making the distinction between “ full-time ” and “ part-time ” farms, has Mr. Scola made allowance for “ non-productive ” work ? The calculations seem to be on the American lines of productive-man-work-units, with no allowances for differences between large and small farms in the proportions of ” productive ” and “ non-productive ” work. Differences due to climate are also ignored, though they are very significant.

Classification of “ part- ” and “ spare-time ” farms by choice of product is, as Mr. Scola says, impossible. I wonder, therefore, if he would tell us what proportion of the total net output of Scottish agriculture comes from such farms.

Lastly. I should like to suggest that we should be careful about sorting only by ’’ choice of product,” and not by location. It is easy enough to criticise sorting by location alone-by what have been c$led ‘ type-of-farming areas.’ But such analysis never did explain I’ choices of product at all fully. After all, these choices rest largely on three sets of factors :-(i) price relationships (especially those between products) ; (ii) input- output relationships for different products, and especially for crops, as determined by climate, soil and topography, and (iii) abilities and interests of individual farmers. Analyses by location help to clarify the position greatly as regards price relationships a t any one time, and substantially as regards basic input-output relationships. Classi- fications by choice-of-product alone take individual farmers’ abilities into account also and result in groupings within which price conditions and natural input-output relationships are quite varied. Through the years, therefore, as choices of product are altered both with general price changes for products and factors, and with changes among the individuals who are farming, analyses by location will often be much more helpful. Further, if we segregate only by choice of product, particular farms will have to be re-designated quite frequently-which is awkward-and the universes of which the farms studied in detail are supposed to be representative will not be known unless the enormous task of frequent re-classification of all full-time farms is undertaken.

P. M . Reasom: I think I may be forgiven if in view of the importance of the subject for the future

I tend to go slightly beyond the strict bounds of MI. Scola’s title. I was extremely interested in this paper but I would have liked to have seen a little

more consideration of what follows this work, which Mr. Scola only very briefly referred to. He does hold out a clear prospect that i t will eventually be possible to divide the country

dairy farming

Proceediitgs of Conference. 15

into regions, when this work has reached a sufficiently satisfactory stage technically, and in each region to publish statistics for the dozen or so groups of farming types which he has described. To my mind this would be an immeasurable advance on the present county figures which are issued, in which all types of farms are grouped together by boundaries largely determined in mediaeval times.

On the new basis we should really be able to study the reactions of the dairy farms of Somerset or Ayrshire, or the beef grazing farms of the Midlands, to changes in prices and other factors. There are, of course, many difficulties. For instance there would be the difficulty that the numbers of stock in a type group of farming could change a t between one census and the next, either because the number of farms in that type group had changed, presuming that the type groups had been kept up to date, or because of a change in numbers of livestock on identical farms. One possible solution is that it might be feasible to issue figures for an identical sample as well as the totals for each group. And in any case there would be for each of the regions the total numbers in all groups as we now have them in the county statistics.

Therefore I feel that it may not be too soon to give thought to the next problems to be tackled. Mr. Jones also mentioned that in spite of all the technical difficulties he does see a reasonable hope of getting this work on a satisfactory footing before too long. I suggest that firstly the actual obstacles to carrying out the preliminary classification for the whole of the U.K. need examining and, secondly, the obstacles to the permanent introduction of the Hollerith system for classifying the returns. I have in mind that during the war a large part of the work was done by machines. Mr. Scola and his colleagues no doubt have these points in mind ; and I hope I have not appeared to suggest that we should run before we can walk.

W . H . Senior: In 1929 I cut my teeth on the original classification of farms in Scotland, and I should

just like to say how very satisfying it is to see that work carried to such a state of perfection as it is now. I well remember the hopes and fears we had in the early days. The only additional point I would make is that it cannot be over-emphasised that this “ tool ” is about the most important one that agricultural economists in this country can ever hope to have. Another more important field which has not been mentioned is the field of policy. There is a prospect, I think, that this work, when completed, will help policy to become rather more realistic. It will certainly be possible to judge the effects of policies much more carefully in future.

In the field of farm management it might be of great use.

D. Witncy: I should like to congratulate Mr. Scola on his paper, and particularly for the contri-

bution he has made to our knowledge. I t is of immense importance to see that out of all the holdings in Scotland only 51 per cent. can be regarded as full-time farms, and that 11 per cent. of the full-time farms in Scotland are engaged in multiple farming business. The classification he describes gives us as thorough a classification as we can ever hope to have, particularly if we add to that the further sub-classification based on the size of the farm.

I have one question to ask, namely, whether having made this really excellent and satisfying classification, he could have gone a little further to see if he could devise the best basis for comparing one type of farm with another, with regard to production and profit. If you compare two extreme types. say, a hill sheep farm and an intensive cropping farm, how does he recommend that we should try to compare the profit and output of these two types of farm ? The acreage basis falls to the ground, and the capital invested.

P. 11.3. Scola: I find it extremely difficult to reply to such a wealth of points. May I start off with

the question that Mr. Senior raised-the use of this information for policy making. I must point out that this classification was carried out by a number of bureaucrats who were trying to satisfy the Government of which they are the servants, and to give some possible guide for policy making, and that seems to me to bring home the point about classification by products. I deny that our approach was directly a product approach (not that we were averse to the idea), but in the absence of information we had to look for the organisation of the different types of farm. But organisation is often boiind up with particular products. For the purposes of policy it would be extremely interesting to have statistics for dairy farms to see how, shall we say, a sudden increase of 2d. a gallon on milk affects the number of cows kept on dairy farms in the following year. A t the moment all you know is that Some time after the increase there may be a few more COWS in the country. You don’t know whether the change has occurred on dairy farms. You can only infer that. It would be a considerable advance to pin down these movements to various types of farms.

16 Agricultural Economics Society.

On the question of frequency distribution. I don’t entirely understand Dr. Raeburn’s point there, but I should say that the type of farm in the Scottish (Types of Farming) report shows frequency distribution for all the full-time types of farms in the appendices. I t does not do so for the part-time farms or the spare-time farms, but these are usually so small that very little is gained by breaking them down into size groups.

On the question of part-time farms, may I say that our main objective was to try and split off what you might call commercial farms from other farms. I think that we have set our limit of hours’ work so low that there is no doubt that the farms that we have described as part- and spare-time farms are really no more than that.

I am afraid we made no allowance for the scale of farming in framing the schedule of time requirements, but we only applied that schedule to these very small units. We did not estimate how many hours work would be required on very large farms.

I cannot tell Dr. Raeburn off-hand what proportion of the Scottish output comes from part-time or spare-time farms, but it is certainly very small.

Unfortunately our main source of information on income must necessarily be from the Colleges, and they are not especially interested in collecting financial accounts from the very small farms. We have tried to make some calculations for the crofts, but Mr. Hayes will be telling us more about that tomorrow.

Dr. Raeburn made a point, which I did not entirely catch, about sampling. Was he under the impression that we have in some way taken a sample of agricultural holdings in Scotland? That is not the case, for we examined schedules for every agricultural holding in Scotland.

Dr. J . R. Raeburn: You are intending to raise the samples later. How are you going to raise them ?

P. fir. Scola : I don’t take the point. Perhaps Dr. Iiaeburn is alarmed that we should overthrow

the concept of farming areas. We are not trying to do that. We have produced a new type of farming map based on 100 per cent. classification of all farms-not based on personal impressions. I think we have produced a better type of farming map than we have had before but it is not very useful to try to work from it statistically.

Mr. Reason raised the question of using the Hollerith system for mechanical classi- fication. I think that must inevitably be the final result. It will not be possible to use statistics by type of farm for long without a reclassification periodically, and that would be a great task if it were done manually. I therefore think that we would have to go over to a mechanical system of analysis first and then proceed to the summation of statistics.

Mr. Witney’s point about the profit which might be expected from the different types of farms leads us into dangeroils waters. I should have thought BIr. Witney was best able to tell us about that.

Chairman : I think we must thank Mr. Scola very much. It is not everyone who can do a good

job, and it is not everyone who having done a good job can explain it. He has done both.