Transactions of RHASS Volume 1940 - Page 040
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| Year | 1940 |
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68 SHORT-TERM AGRICULTURAL CREDIT. improvement or other would undoubtedly yield a handsome return wholly disproportionate to the outlay involved, one begins to appreciate the fact that any work so far done in this direction has but touched the fringe of the job. Why is it that more extensive use has not been made of the Company’s loan facilities? Is it that the terms are not suifieiently attractive to the landowning classes? Is it that our present generation of landowners no longer command sufficient capital resources to contemplate embarking on any ambitious scheme of improvement, however necessary, on their already heavily encumbered estates? If so, it is regrettable that the task of bringing back the whole of our agricultural land, the nation’s heritage, to full production should be shelved—a job which in the national interest should be tackled at once in this time of emergency. But probably it would encourage a greater demand for the services and facilities of the Company if two amendments were effected in its constitution: first, the abolition of the regulation that any proposed loan must be advertised for two weeks in the local Press before work can be commenced on the scheduled im- provement—a small matter which does undoubtedly tend to deter many would-be borrowers who shun such publicity; and secondly (and much more important), the extension of the approved list of scheduled improvements eligible for loans. This is all the more necessary inw‘iew of the fact that the past ten years have witnessed a marked transition towards increasing mechanisation on many up-to—date farms as a means of securing more economical working and increased production. Tractors and tractor-drawn implements, grass driers, haymaking machinery, milking machines and modern dairy plant, and the like improve in technical efficiency and become more and more indispensable year by year; the continuance and intensification of present difficulties with the farm labour supply will accelerate this tendency towards mechanisation. Yet all these costly items of plant and machinery are outside the scope of the loan facilities offered by the Company. Would it not be conducive to more efficient and progressive agriculture if these, and similar implements, could be purchased on easy terms with money borrowed at very low rates of interest (say, 2 per cent per annum), with capital and interest repayable in equal quarterly instalments over a period of three to five years “.3 SMALLHOLDINGs. Are there any problems relating to short-term or inter- mediate credit which are peculiar to smallholdings? Let us take the type of holdings which has come into prominence these last few years in the East of Scotland—the 3-8 acre SHORT—TERM AGRICULTURAL CREDIT. 69 ‘new type’ holding, usually carrying poultry, or pigs, or market-gardening in some form or other, or some combination of these three enterprises. It is a well-established fact that most smallholdings usually carry a disproportionately large Share of tenants’ working capital in implements and equipment. ‘Dead stock’ absorbs far too large a share of their available capital, and when so much is sunk in implements, poultry- housing, or even bricks and lime, their turnover is perforce relatively slow. Without delving too deeply into problems of the internal organisation of smallholdings which are hardly relevant to the subject of this article, it may be stated that the root difficulties of smallholdings are the closely allied, closely interwoven problems arising from lack of capital, lack of credit, and lack of co-operation. Even on these very small holdings, where specialisation and high intensity of produc- tion must be the keynote of the whole organisation if the holder is to work on a scale big enough to give him full-time employment and a reasonable prospect of making a modest livelihood, he soon finds that he needs to have command of a considerable amount of capital; and unfortunately he must lay out a large pr0portion of his all-too-slender savings on either a piggery, or a tomato-house, or poultry-houses and appliances, or a rototiller. In many cases lack of capital precludes all possibility of the man starting out on a big enough scale, or attaining it quickly. And whereas co-operative action amongst the holders on a complete colony might enable them all to effect big economies in the purchase of feeding-stuffs, housing materials, &c., as well as to market their eggs and other produce to better advantage, one of the biggest deterrents against any such much-needed measure of co-operative self- help is the fact that some of them, in arrears with their feeding- stuifs bills, are reluctant to run any risk of this state of affairs being brought to light and discussed by their neighbours. if provision could be made for intermediate credit facilities— 2.6., for approved development loans repayable at modest rates of interest over a long period, it would be a godsend to many holders at present struggling with adversity. Even lor the general stocking and equipping of holdings at entry, there is much to be said for a considerable extension of the litClllthS afforded on a modest scale of late years by the ficottish Land Settlement Credit Association in the East of bootland, which has furnished a few men with the nucleus of their working capital for a smallholding, though not always With unqualified success. A WAR-TIME DEVELOPMENT. It is appropriate that a brief reference should be made to the Special credit facilities recently made available by virtue |
| Title | Transactions of RHASS Volume 1940 - Page 040 |
