AGRICULTURAL.

Patea Mail, Volume III, Issue 307, 27 March 1878, Page 4

AGRICULTURAL.

[From the Canterbury Times.'] In our last article we drew the attention of fanners to the subject of rotation, but we confined ourselves chiefly to remarks of a general character. In the present article it is proposed to take some particular systems into consideration. A four course system may be arranged by sowing turnips the first year, followed by barley the second year, clover coming after the barley as a preparation for oats or wheat in the fourth year. In Scotland it is usual to sow oats in the fourth year, in England wheat. • If a five course system is adopted, barley comes first, and for the two following years the land is in grass. Wheat is sown in the fourth year, followed by turnips in the fifth. This system may be extended "to six courses^ by allowing the grass to remain for three years; or a six course system is sometimes arranged by sowing oats in the first year, potatoes or mangolds the second, wheat comes in the third year, followed by turnips in the fourth, and in the fifth year the land is laid down to grass with a crop of barley, and remains in grass during the sixth year. A modification of the four-course system is sometimes effected by taking beans as a third course, followed by wheat, turnips, and barley in the fourth, fifth, and sixth years respectively. Grain seed is sown with the barley, and the course may be extended to eight years by allowing the grass to remain for the additional time. It is to be observed that in a good rotation two crops of the same nature, whether roots or grain, should never follow on the same ground even with another crop intervening. Thus if wheat comes after a green crop, and is followed by turnips the next crop should be barley or oats. The rotations given above are usually practised by English farmers on light land suitable for turnips. On heavy clay soils a somewhat different system is adopted. Instead of beginning the rotation with turnips, barley, or oats, a summer fallow is given, during which the land is sweetened and cleared of weeds by repeated and careful working. The first crop after the fallow is usually wheat, followed by peas, beans, or clover, and then barley. This system is, like those on turnip land, capable of modification. It is hardly necessary to say that it is to the English and Scotch farmers to whom we must look for examples for the most advanced systems of rotation. Some Continental races excel in the art of extracting an astonishriug quantity of produce from small areas of land, especially in countries where peasant proprietors abound, but whose systems of agriculture partake largely of the nature of spade husbandry, and therefore afford examples of but small practical value to our farmers. Even the gc-ahead Americans are an incalculable distance behind the English in scientific farming ; and progressive as we may be, we have still need for frequent recourse to the mother country “ for other commodities besides those ' supplied' by the money-lender.” The proportion between the cattle crops and the grain crops is the key to any system of rotation. It io somewhat singular, however, that so great a difference of opinion should exist among the leading English agriculturists as to the economy of feeding. Mr Mechi, for example, maintains that live stock do not pay at all; while Mr Caird : affirms that they are the chief source of profit to the British farmer. But the truth of the matter appears to be that crops such as turnips, which are raised at a high cost, do not yield a return equivalent to the expenditure of labour and manure requred for their production, but pay indirectly through the corn crops. It is found that in those counties which possess a moist climate the fertility of the land can be renovated at a smaller cost by relying more upon grass than root crops for ameliorating the soil. The county of Norfolk has long been celebrated for its farming. So far back as 1770 Arthur Young makes special mention of the Norfolk system, and the principle then adopted in that county has never undergone any very material alteration. “ The climate of Norfolk,” says a recent writer, “is not so well suited to the growth of turnips as the West of England, Ireland, or Scotland, but the turnip is a more prominent crop in Norfolk than in any of those places. Turnips are an expensive crop, and in the feeding of stock do not directly pay the farmer for raising them. They, however, are a necessary part of the system in Norfolk, even when sown to so great an extent as to one-fourth-of the arable land. In the Norfolk rotation, one half the land is in equal parts of barley and wheat, which are both high-priced grains. The raising of these two grains can better afford a loss to be made upon the turnip crop than if oats had taken the place of the one or the other. In the moister climates, which admit only of inferior grains being sown, the turnip, though easily raised, never occupies a fourth of the extent of the farm, as is the case in Norfolk. The raising of the crop for feeding cattle or sheep does not pay of itself, and hence on farms where oats are the principal grain raised, pasturing the arable land for more than one year is the course always followed. ,> It will-thus be seen that the Norfolk system is an intensified one ; the cheaper method of restoring the land by means of pasture cannot be adopted by the Norfolk farmer so extensively, as in some other countries, he is compelled to take more costly measures, but thg dryness of the climate enables him to grow successfully the high-priced grains,

wheat and barley, and to dispense with the production of the cheaper cereal. But it is plain that no system of rotation, however well arranged it may be, can keep the land in good heart without the aid of manure. This has already been exemplified in the most practical manner at ouv own doors. Canterbury farmers have tried both turnips and grass, and neither the one nor the other, nat a combination, ofbothhas proved efficacious in keeping the land up to its original state of fertility. Independent of what may eventually be accomplished by irrigation, it is probable that our farmers will find pasture with top dressing the readiest and most effectual means of restoring the fertility of the soil.