THE FIRST FARMERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3940, 9 May 1929, Page 1

THE FIRST FARMERS.

_• AMENT ROMANS. ANTIQUITY OF LUCERNE. Forming began in Rome, says the “Prairie Fanner.” The Assyrians and the Egyptians had merely learned to scratch the soil. Whatever success they had was due to kindly Nature and a fertile soil rather than to intelligent farming. The fertility of the Valley of the Nile was lacking in Rome. The Romans had to farm better than the Egyptians or starve. They chose to learn to farm. The Babylonians let a wornout field lie idle for a year. The Romans summer-fallow-ed it. The Egyptians grew legumes for food and hay. The Romans grew them in rotation to improve the soil. They learned to test soil for sourness and to improve it with marl in the provinces where that material was available. 'They selected their seed carefully and grew alfalfa. In the words of Cato: “It is fiom the tillers of the soil that spring the best citizens, the staunchest soldiers; and (theirs are the enduring rewards which are most grateful and least envied.” Not having a naturally fertile soil the Roman farmer had to maintain its productiveness with care. “Wha t is the first principle of good agriculture?” asks Cato. “To plough well. What is the second? To plough again; the third is to manure.” And he adds that: “It is the lazy farmer who lacks manure.”

“It is .much more desirable for the farmer to feed his forage on the land than to sell it,” says Vnrro, “and a herd of cattle is the best source of supply of that which is the most available food for growing plants —manure.” But Varro realised that there must he grain as well as live stock farmers, and ,t-o the former he gives this advice on green manuring:— “Certain plants are cultivated not so much for their immediate yield as with forethought for the coming year, because cut and left lying they imlprove 'the land. So if land is too thin it is the practice to plough in for manure, lupins not yet podded, and likewise the field bean if it has not yet ripened so that it is fitting to harvest the. beans.” “Of all the legumes alfalfa, is the host,” says Columella, “because when once it is sown it lasts ten years; because it can be mowed four times, or even six times, a year; because it improves the soil; because all lean cattle grow fat by feeding upon it; (because a jugerum (two-thirds of an acre) of it will feed three horses plentifully for a year.” Few of oiir present-day authorities would put the case so correctly or convincingly.