Imperial Agricultural Research

Abstract

IT is distinctly unfortunate that the first seven plenary sessions of the imperial Agricultural Research Conference were held during the week in which two political paries held their annual conferences. The subject matter under discussion at the research conference is of the greatest significance to an Empire in which the foremost industry is agriculture and the future of which depends wholly upon the progressive realisation of the vast potential resources of the lands which it embraces. Nothing has been left undone by the Empire Marketing Board and the Ministry of Agriculture to emphasise these two points. The reports, memoranda, and pamphlets which they have prepared and distributed to the delegates present for their information and guidance in discussing the various items on the agenda are calculated to interest a wide public, and would undoubtedly have been extensively used by the Press for this purpose had the meetings to which they refer been held a week earlier. It can scarcely be expected, however, that the Press will give undue prominence to a conference dealing with such impersonal and serious questions as those relating to the influence of scientific research upon our economic position, unless they are dealt with in a brilliantly illuminating and arresting manner and by speakers who have attained a position in popular esteem which rivals that held by the leaders of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party respectively.