METHODS OF FARMING.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4480, 16 October 1922, Page 4

METHODS OF FARMING.

OLD WORLD AND NEW.

MANY POINTS OF CONTRAST.

Some interesting observations concerning agriculture in Europe and the United States were made by Mr Donald McCormick, manager of the Onehunga branch of the National Bank, who recently returned by ths Makura after six months’ furlough. His tour included Italy, the South of France, the battlefield areas in. North-, ■ern France and Belgium, Great Britain, and a fairly, extensive trip through North America. Dairying methods were very different in the Northern Hemisphere, Mr McCormick said, the climate requiring that the cattle be hand-fed during a large part, of the year. That probably accounted for the phenomenal butteivfat records made by some cows, one Holstein in the United States registering over 12001 b within a year. Home-made butter was greatly featured in England, but it was often produced under conditions 0? absolute dirt, which would not be tolerated here. In the cleanliness of daries New- Zealand had much to teach the Mother Country. New Zealand mutton and lamb were very highly spoken of throughout England. It was worth noting that, it was always called ‘‘prime Canterbury,” the rest of the provinces,, or the Dominion itself, getting no credit for their production. He received a strange reply from a Frepch waiter with regard to our frozen meat. “It was very good, but it tasted of wool,” said the Frenchman, but what that meant Mr McCormick failed to. elicit. On the Continent the meat generally was of a wretchedly low quality and very high in There should be a great market .there for our productAs the New* Zealand soldier had been before him, Mr McCormick was greatly impressed with the intensive farming in Northern France and Belgium. Every inch of land was used, and often no space was spared for fences. Manuring was much heavier, both artificial and farmyard, and the methods used meant "real farming” in a sense that New Zealand did not yet understand. The cropping of cereals on so enormous a scale was also jmpressive to a visiter from a purely pastoral province like Auckland. Mr McCormick noted that in Western America the even climate permitted almost universal stook threshing as the standing grain was cut.

In the battlefield areas the brutal scarring of the land by war had been

almost completely healed by reconstruction since t,he war. Isolated areas remained in the desolate condition in which they were left in 1918, the district about Passchendaele being a case in point. But the Hindenburg line was no more, and the Belgians were working very hard at replacing Ypres. The labourers worked in the long days of the Northern summer. from dawn to dark, escaping by ingenious pretexts from the eighthour day which the trade unions tried to enforce. Many of the men averaged the equivalent of £1 a day.

The tour of 'the battlefields was still being made by a good many people, although little but the pill-boxes, which cost too much to blow up, marked the old fighting lines. Still the people went chiefly to find the graves of relatives. Mr McCormick found the war cemeteries generally well cared for. In one cemetery at Passchendaele there were 3400 graves, chiefly of colonial troops, all carefully tended.