Transactions of RHASS Volume 1940 - Page 041
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| Year | 1940 |
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70 SHORT-TERM AGRICULTURAL CREDIT. of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous War Provisions) Bill1 for farmers, who, under the instructions of their County Agri- cultural Executive Committee, are bringing more land under the plough as part of the Government’s increased food produc- tion campaign. Feeling that there may be a minority of farmers who find difiiculty in financing the operations con- nected with this increased cultivation (whose ordinary sources of credit are insufficiently elastic to enable them to carry out their programme of increased production), the Government have now arranged, in co-Operation with the banks, for special credit facilities to be made available for that purpose. In Scotland such applications will be handled by the eight joint stock banks, and loans will bear interest not exceeding 5 per cent per annum ; they must be utilised solely for defray- ing the additional costs thereby incurred on cultivations, seeds and manures, harvesting, new implements, &c., after such costs have been duly certified by the Agricultural Execu- tive Committee as both necessary and reasonable; and the borrower undertakes to repay the loan (which is kept in a separate bank account) on a stipulated date. It is probable that only those men who have exhausted all other possible sources Of credit will seek to obtain these special loans. The total volume of such loans is therefore not likely to be large ; and in all probability they are hardly likely to cause any appreciable difference to the farmer’s normal credit supplies. CONCLUSION. To sum up, it may be stated that an impartial observer might be prompted to remark rather cynically that our short- term agricultural credit system is no system at all; and in comparison with, say, the imposing edifice of agricultural credit in U.S.A. it is but another truly British example of makeshift and compromise. But notwithstanding the inferior position so long held by the agricultural industry in the national economy of this country, the makeshift system works reasonably well. There is no clear indication of any wide- spread demand for increased short-term credit facilities amongst the farmers; it is, in fact, the contention of many that if credit facilities were more easily available, and taken up by the farmer, they would be but another millstone round his neck. Given reasonable prices for crops and stock, they say, and a return to more normal conditions, the farmer would have small cause to worry about agricultural credit, since anyone who really deserves it can obtain all the credit he needs. And there is much to support this view. 1 This was first made public on 16th March 1940. SCRAPIE. By PROFESSOR J. RUSSELL GREIG, Director, Moredun Institute, Animal Diseases Research Association, Edinburgh. THE nature of the disease to which the name “ Scrapic ” is usually applied has long remained obscure. It is perhaps for this reason_that the names by which the disease is known are colloquial in character and refer to certain of its more outstanding symptoms, particularly the persistent itch and the disturbances in gait; thus in England it was known as the rubbers, the goggles; in Scotland as scrapie, cuddy trot, and yeuky pine ; in France it is named la tremblante (the trembles) ; and in Germany is referred to as gnubberkmnkheit (itching disease) and traberkmnkheit (trotting disease). HISTORICAL. Scrapie appears to have been in existence in this country during the last two hundred years, and there is evidence of its occurrence throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century in Germany and France, countries in parts of which it is still prevalent. Scrapie has been investigated in this country particularly . by Stockrnan, M‘Gowan, M‘Fadyean and Gaiger, and the two first-mentioned authors have furnished historical accounts of the disease in Britain. _ According to M‘Gowan scrapie was first recorded in England in 1732; it does not appear, however, to have become prev- alent until the later decades of the eighteenth century. It was then of common occurrence in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Dorset, and York- shire, but apparently was not recognised in the Border counties of Scotland until after 1800; records, however, show that it was well known in Roxburghshire in 1850. _ The earlier literature appears to indicate that on the Con- tinent Merino sheep were particularly susceptible to attack, and it has been suggested that it was as the result of the various transportations of this breed that the disease was dispersed. German writers state that it was introduced into Germany by the importation of Merinos from Spain in 17 65, and that the subsequent distribution of the disease followed |
| Title | Transactions of RHASS Volume 1940 - Page 041 |
