EDISON'S PROPHECY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 358, 6 May 1911, Page 6

EDISON'S PROPHECY.

COMING FARMER WILL MERELY PRESS A BUTTON. Edison, the American wizard, has been unraveling the future to an interviewer, and among other scenes he pictured in the golden age coming, owing to the genius of the scientist and the inventor, was that in the agricultural prospect. Edison is confident that a great revolution is destined to take place in primary industries. He says the farmers need to be shaken up; that they are "shy of brains;" that most of the brainy farmer boys go to the cities, notwithstanding that nowhere else are brains more needed than on the farm. Edison believes the present type of farmer and the present methods of farming are destined to disappear; that in place of the present farmer will come a shrewd business man who will be at once a soil-chemist, a botanist, and an economist; that in place of the present farmer's machinery will come implements in comparison with which the best agricultural implements now known will seem primitive; that storage batteries will drive ploughs that will make a dozen furrows each time they cross a field, and harrows that will mellow the earth more rapidly than ever horses could mellow it—in fact, that storage, batteries will furnish most of the power needed on a farm. "I think the coming farmer," said Edison, "will be a man on a seat beside a push-button and some levers. The present trend all points to this conclusion. We are making wonderful headway. Twenty years ago we knew almost nothing about scientific agriculture. Now we are beginning to get an inkling of the causes that lie at the back of soil deterioration. We are also learning something about the methods of restoring soil fertility. Simultaneously, invention has brought about great improvements in farm machinery. Gang ploughs are now driven by gas engines, and corn is cut and bound by machinery. It is hard to keep up with the latest thing in the line of farm implements" There is already a glint of the picture Edison draws in the awakening to the need of more exact work on the part of the farmer. In this young country in particular the farmer is coming to realise that crude rule of thumb methods must give way to exact work on scientific principles. The most striking instance of the wasteful use of nature's bounty by farming community is contained in the work of the American settler of a generation now passing away. The virgin lands were worked, and as the natural fertility became exhausted the farmers solved the problem of replenishing it by the simple expedient of moving their plants to the next vacant area. A present generation is engaged to good purpose in reclaiming those abandoned farms by means of proper cultural methods and the use of artificial plant food. The history of American farming has been repeated in part in this country. From the first the object of the farmer was to secure as much land as possible rather than to take up only as much land as he could work to the best advantage. The soil has been merely scratched and where much cultivation has been done it has been carried out by a process of exhaustion, the generous supply of natural fertility being deliberately exhausted ; so with pastures, which have been seldom properly managed, the carrying capacity being thereby greatly reduced. Still the gospel has to be learnt that the moderate holding properly managed affords a better means of livelihood than the larger area indifferently managed. The future is full of hope, however, for the truth is being forced home that the soil is not an inexhaustible mine of fertility, but that there is a limit to its plant food content, and if depletion takes p!ac6 the farmer must- make it good if he is to obtain payable crops and maintain profitable pastures. The better feeding of stock is also coming to be appreciated, and doubtless in time the importance of protecting farm stock from biting winds and the cold of winter will be realised. The most satisfactory indication of a new and more enlightened era in primary production is the keen interest being taken in many quarters in the experimental activity of the Department of Agriculture, particularly in the cooperative experiment campaign, and in such admirable movements as hand testing. In the new order exactitude will replace guesswork, and the foundation is being laid for the much to be desired transition. There is good reason to believe, therefore, that should Edison's prophecy be realised the New Zealand farmer will be prepared to take full advantage o£ it when it comes,—N,Z, Times.