Country life
Fungus time
Patrick Marnham
Since the village has three witches and only one third of a vicar it is hardly surprising that the Harvest Festival is the best attended church service of the year. The vicar always looks a little puzzled by its popularity, but he should realise that the harvest service is a hyper-oecumenical occasion. The witches and their pagan followers observe the equinox and its fertility rites most strictly, and even Isaac the ploughman — who is far too atheist for the three dark sisters — will not let the season pass unnoticed. After sixty years of regular church-going Isaac has fallen out with the new vicar and has sworn to attend no further services until his own funeral. But on the Saturday before Harvest Home he does remove a number of vegetables from his garden and carries them up to the church. The witches, who have a lively sense of the profane, have been urging him to leave his acoustic ear muffs there as well, but Isaac has decided that he needs them when driving the noisy tractor and anyway he has always known where to draw the line.
Strictly speaking, Isaac should now be described as a direct drill-man, rather than a ploughman. The insurance company which employs him has gone over to the new method. Isaac's mouldboard plough has been put aside, as have the harrow, the cultivator and the roller. Now there is just the mechanised drill and the paraquat sprayer. The seed is propelled directly into last year's stubble and later the weeds are killed with the appropriate poison. Isaac wears a respirator as well as ear muffs and in case any wild oats survive the spray he has also been promised a herbicide rubber glove. With this on his hand he merely has to squeeze the offending plant. This caress releases a poison and a coloured dye and saves him from grasping the same weed twice.
The practising witches who run the Ministry of Agriculture are preparing for excep tional celebrations this year in gratitude for their existence. If the country produces an extra half a million tons of corn it looks very well in the trade figures and enables the Ministry to pretend that we are moving towards self-sufficiency in food. All it actu ally means is that there has been a marginal improvement in the weather and that more arable farmers have been persuaded to buy the National Seed Organisation's highly yielding varieties. There will be no selfsufficiency in food under present policies, and with the annual decrease in agricultural land the real tendency is in the opposite direction. In terms of productive use of the land British agriculture is one of the least efficient systems in Europe. We eat far more than we produce and will continue to do so until more people are engaged in the work of growing food and more land is dedicated to that use.
But the food policy in this country is not decided by the Ministry, nor does it matter what government is supposedly in control. It responds instead to the needs of the great chemical companies which have invested in agriculture, such as ICI and Fisons. ICI is one of the biggest companies in the world. Its annual tax bill, as it is fond of boasting, pays for a large part of any British government's spending programme. Its exports are of similar size. No politician is in anY condition to take on ICI in the matter of food policy. And chemical companies will not make many pennies out of the sort of agriculture which created the country and fed its people, and which was labour intensive and self-sufficient. Two side effects have become apparent this summer.
The first is the return of onion couch. This is a bulbous mass of coarse grass which has been easily controlled for hundreds of years by ploughing. But direct drilling has allowed it to return because it is one of the heroic weeds of our time and is resistant to paraquat. It is also resistant to aminotriazole. Furthermore, direct drilling seems to spread the couch bulbs around the field. Official advice on dealing with onion couch is to postpone spraying until mid-winter, which usually means cancelling the winter sowing of wheat.
The second development is the increase of fungus diseases in this summer's wheat crop. In some parts of the country this has been spectacular and has reduced the crop by a quarter. Some of the Ministry's new bread wheats, such as Flinor, are particularly vulnerable. The appearance Of this fungus disease is an official mystery, but it has been mentioned unofficially that research in New Zealand has connected it with the presence of concentrations Of nitrate in the soil. High-yielding seeds (produced by the Ministry) need a lot of ammonium nitrate (produced by ICI). About one million tons of nitrogen are spread on the land each year. Nitrates may not only cause fungus disease in wheat, they may have assisted the spread of fungus diseases in trees, such as Dutch Elm disease and the diseases which are now attacking the Beech, the Ash and the Sycamore. Fungus diseases need fungicides (produced by ICI), and fungicides have caused mutations and cancers. This can sometimes be treated with drugs (provided by ICI). Nitrates can also cause cancer directly if they run off farm land and become over concentrated in the water supply and on several occasions the level of nitrates in London's water supply has exceeded the safety limits recommended by the World Health Organisation. According to the Thames Water Authority this is not a matter for concern and it will be dealt with in future by adding a chemical to the drinking water. This chemical may even be provided by ICI. Drink up.
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