Abstract
THE marketing of agricultural produce is much more difficult than that of factory produce. The time element dominates production: in spite of all advances in science, a cow still takes nine months to produce a calf, and a ewe takes five months to produce lambs; by no known method can these processes be hastened, and still more months have to elapse before either calf or lamb is of much value as food. Seed time and harvest come much as they did a thousand years ago: wheat is still in the ground some eight or nine months before it is ready for cutting. However, while plants and animals move slowly, prices change rapidly, and it has happened frequently in recent years that farmers have started the production of lamb, milk or bacon on perfectly sound methods fully in accordance with the prevailing level of prices, but, long before the commodity was ready for sale, prices had changed so drastically as to involve the farmers in heavy financial loss. Obviously, science could do nothing to help: the trouble was purely economic.
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Agricultural Marketing Boards in Great Britain. Nature 133, 545–547 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133545a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133545a0