ABSTRACT
A standard argument is that British agriculture must be protected in order to reduce the scarcity of world food supplies. Importable supplies of animal products were available at 77% of home produce prices and of crops at 73%. Only for wool were the home and foreign prices equal and for only two other products, beef and mutton, were the import prices more than 81% of the home prices. The argument concerning long-term movements of the relative prices of agricultural and manufactured produce is irrelevant because in a fully employed world economy such changes, as far as any can be reasonably foreseen at all, will take place gradually. The small average size of British farms is often advanced as a reason for their inefficiency which, it is claimed, is due to an under-utilization of costly capital equipment and, to some extent, of labour on the small farm.
