A Modest Member of Parliament [Bert Kelly], “Horse sense about the pony trap,” The Australian Financial Review, May 21, 1971, p. 3. Reprinted in Economics Made Easy (Adelaide: Brolga Books, 1982), pp. 29-31, as “Small Farmers (2).”

The government’s recently announced Rural Reconstruction Scheme has three parts — Debt Reconstruction, Farm Restructuring and Retraining for those who wish to leave the land. Let’s have a look at Farm Restructuring.

A short while ago, at a meeting in my district, a big raw-boned bloke at the back of the hall got slowly to his feet and complained that the farms in our district were getting bigger and that the country towns were getting smaller. He then truculently asked what I was going to do about it. “After all, you are our Member — we pay you enough, goodness knows. Surely you can answer a simple question like that!”

Usually, when people adopt a belligerent attitude like this my footwork is pretty to watch as I change from one position to another, blaming first my State colleagues, then local government, or someone else — anyone but me. But in this case I took a long breath and told him that I had a sure and simple cure for the problem. This was a bit of a shock to the audience who are unused to my having a definite opinion about anything, so they listened expectantly. Only Mavis started to fidget.

I then explained if they wanted farms to be smaller, all they had to do was change back from tractors to horses. Our farm were once shaped around the area that a ten-horse team could handle. But as we changes from horses to tractors, and then to bigger rubber tyred tractors, the farms tended to grow in size until they fitted the area that an efficient power unit could handle.

So with the small country towns. In our district, townships were spaced along the railway line and the distances between them were decided by the distance you could conveniently cart wheat with horse teams, and the distances you could conveniently travel in the trap to do your shopping. So I told them if they wanted healthy small townships, all they had to do was to sell their cars and go back to the horse and trap.

Mavis started to sniff at this stage and she signalled to me to sit down before I told them any more unpalatable home truths. “Tell them what they want to hear,” she complained as we drove home, “don’t tell them simple truths like that. You’ll never get on if you do that, dear.”

However, the big bloke at the back of the hall seemed to think there was a lot of sense in what I said. Of course he didn’t say so then but he sidled up to me as we were having a cup of tea afterwards. (It would have helped if he had said it publicly.)

The farms in our district have been getting bigger since the district was first cut up from station properties into farmers that suited horse teams. Any government action that prevents the aggregation of farms that are too small, into economic-sized family farms is bad for farmers, although it might be good for getting votes.

There is far too much nonsense talked about our farm lands falling into the hands of big companies. If you want to get an extra loud cheer, add the bogey of “overseas-owned” and you are well away. But the plain fact is that in the mixed farming areas, and that is the system common to most of southern Australia, the economic-sized family farm will do the large company farm (overseas-owned or not) like a dinner. It is true that there are some economic advantages that come with large-scale farming, but there are also a great many disadvantages. The chief of these is that nobody works for other people quite as well as they work for themselves. This is particularly true when it comes to caring for stock.

Anyway, the likelihood of large lumps of overseas capital being channelled into farming at this stage seems a little remote. I’m sure if I had a lot of money (even if I lived overseas) I would consider myself soft in the head if I put it into farming, particularly if the taxation advantages for city farmers were withdrawn. So the process of farm aggregation will go on — and indeed should go on, to encourage the formation of economic-sized family farms.

Other Bert Kelly columns on small farms include:
1. Traditional Wheat Farming is Our Birthright and Heritage and Must be Protected! — “Subsidising prosperity on the small farm,” The Australian Financial Review, August 14, 1970, p. 3.
2. Subsidising only small farmers means subsidising the big banks — “Would Fred fleece the wool subsidy?,” The Australian Financial Review, September 3, 1971, p. 3.
3. “Why costs can’t be guaranteed,” The Bulletin, May 15, 1984, p. 118.