A. PRACTICAL EXAMPLE IN ARABLE FARMING.
ACORRESPONDENT writes to us as follows in regard to Lord Lee's appointment, and the speeding of the plough, with which we have dealt in the preceding article :— " Lord Lee, if we are to judge by what he did when previously connected with the Board of Agriculture, will be essentially a speeder up of the plough. His object will be to make the maximum of English land into amble, thereby producing more than it has produced before—a wholly necessary condition in the world shortage of food. None of the old questions of political economy are really involved. We have not now got to think of Bastiat's wise statement in regard to the things a nation requires. 'It must either grow them or make them for itself, or else grow or make something which can be exchanged for them.' If we do not grow our own corn, we are in the very greatest danger of having no corn at all. Other people are coming to regard their corn as something too precious to part with."
Our correspondent goes on to describe the personal experiences which converted him to the belief that almost all land not under the plough is wasted when agriculturally considered, and this quite as much from the point of view of producing stock and dairy animals or feeding horses as from that of feeding men. Mere grass is usually a crop which is thoroughly uneconomic. Our correspondent's experience is thus described :- " In January, 1918, I was ordered by the Agricultural Com- mittee of my county to put under the plough a field of poorish down pasture of six acres Though in theory I was all for growing every possible blade of corn, I kicked at this. My field did really seem an exception to the rule. In the first place, I proposed to turn into it, as soon as the weather got better, the four ponies which did most of the transport work for the hospital established in my house. Later I was going to reserve it for hay for the said ponies. Next, it was situated 600 feet above the sea and was two miles from any village. My tenant who farmed the land round the field had already more land to plough up and to cultivate than he could find labour for, and refused on those grounds to take over the six acres. I myself do no farming, and therefore had no ploughs or any moans for getting the land ploughed or cultivated. To make matters worse, the day on which I received the notice to plough I was going into a nursing home for an operation, and therefore could not look after the matter myself. The prospect in our isolated position and with our want of im- plements thus seemed perfectly hopeless. To add to this, the ground was not fertile, and it seemed almost certain that in the first two or three years it would yield little or nothing, and we should not even have the much-needed hay crop. However. I determined not to rebel, and I had the good fortune to have an able and patriotic gardener. He took on what was not his job, although he already had as much as he could do, being very short-handed owing to the war, in my kitchen garden and poultry-runs. He very pluckily promised to get the field broken up by German prisoners or by borrowing a tractor, or anyhow or somehow, and to see it through. What was the result ? Instead of yielding on an average six tons of poorish hay, plus about four pounds' worth of pastur- age for my ponies, the field produced, on a conservative estimate. a mixed crop of potatoes, buckwheat, and oats to the value of about f1-10. As the patients in the hospital ate almost all the produce of the land in one way or another, we did not market the crops, but there was no doubt that we could have sold them for that, and probably for a good deal more. Owing to the cost of transport and the isolated position of my land, the cost of equivalent supplies delivered F.O.H. (Free-on-Hill) would certainly have been greater. Therefore, judging merely by what was produced, the land worked under the plough and not as pasture increased its productivity three or four times. The question of profit of course remains over. Strange as it may seem, I believe that, in spite of our having to do many things in a very expensive way owing to my having no farm imple- ments, I yet made considerably more profit than if I had kept the land in pasture. It would, however, be useless to attempt even approximate calculations here. I cannot say what amount of wages ought to be allotted to the garden and stable labour employed upon the field.
After it had been broken up my own ponies did a good deal of the cultivation.
No doubt to experienced agriculturists this will seem a very old and dull story. I merely notice it as a proof of how very much more product will come out of land when it is under the plough than when not under it. It is not a question whether you are going in for grazing or corn-raising. Whatever form of agri- culture you practise, milk-producing or horse-producing, or what not, ploughland will give you more than pasture. More men and women, more horses, more cows, more pigs, more goats, more fowls, and even more rabbits will live upon a hundred acres under the plough than upon a hundred acres in pasture. This is why an ordinary German farm yielded so much more than an English farm of the same size. It was more exclusively arable. Denmark tells the same story.
I used to think England would lose in beauty by going under the plough; but seeing the wind playing with the golden heads of his own wheat soon converts a man on this point. God speed the plough l "
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