FIGURES IN FARMING.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 156, 28 October 1926, Page 6

FIGURES IN FARMING.

APPLYING STATISTICAL METHODS.

In agi-icultural operations farmers have in the past commonly depended upon rough and ready evidence. Information, which may have been right at one time and under particu- ] lar circumstances, is acted upon regardless of the fact that it may be no longer reliable. Farming traditions die hard, and pass down from generation to generation, and, in the absence of better direction, imitation is often carried to excess. But in these days farmers cannot afford to stay in a groove ; old methods must give place to new, and the aid of modern science must be enlisted as the handmaiden of agriculture. Crude experiments have to give place to those carried out with scientific exactness, and the results of these experiments must be set down accurately to be of any value to the farmer. The statistical method as applied to agriculture is comparatively new, but it has come to stay. A good example of imitative method in agricultui-e is seen in the gorse hedge. Early farmers in New Zealand became so accustomed to gorse I hedges in England that they natur- I ally set about growing them in the | new country regardless of the fact j that they have few advantages and ! many disadvantages. Then, again, I there is no rule-of-thumb method in | agriculture. What will give good re- I suits in one district may be a total failure in another. For instance, farmers on the alluvial plains of Canterbury, knowing from experience how to treat the soil there, have sometimes been led to think that the same methods would be applicable to similar locations in Westland, but they soon found that this was a mistake and that to continue without better knowledge of the soils and their treatment was to court failure. Farmers will also say that they find that varieties “go off.” Of course they will when only culls are used for seed or if no care is taken to preserve the quality and constitution proper to the type. False impressions may, moreover, be gained about varieties of crops under cultivation because the tests are *not scientifically carried out. In these days of keen competition and high land prices the farmer cannot afford haphazard methods any longer ; operations must be scientifically conducted, or else there will be failure. The result is that farmers are more and more depending upon the scientific researches for information, which information the experiments of the Agricultural Department are intended to supply.

Old methods of testing by means of ■ rough and ready experimental plots are useless. Land which all looks the same to the eye may and often does vary literally yard by yard. Many factors may affect the soil; the proximity of hedges and trees, the unequal supply of water and biological differences in the soil owing to previous crops are but a few of the things to be reckoned with. The modern method of setting out an experimental plot is to divide up the land into numerous small divisions. If, for instance, two varieties are to be tested they are sown alternatively in numerous plots of each. The laws of chance will then ensure the striking of a reliable average; simply to grow one plot against another, confining the test to two, is to arrive at hopelessly uncertain results. Seasonal variation must also be taken into account if reliable returns are needed.

To give a minor example of the statistical method applied to crops it may be imagined that eight plots gave the following returns expressed in tons per acre: 25, 21, 16, 15, 14, 14, 8, 7. The average would be 15 tons to the acre. Taking the four central numbers grouped round about the average, it will be seen that they are either one more or one less than the average; the average would therefore be expressed as 15 plus or minus 1, and the term plus or minus 1 would represent a measure of the accuracy of this average. This would be a far more reliable result than the following figures which similarly give an average of 16 plus or minus 4:—27, 25, 20, 16, 15, 12, 8. 5. The farmer wants to know where he is as regards his probable returns. The latter figures indicate that if he grew a crop under similar conditions he would have equal chances (i.e., four—out of eight) of obtaining a yield between 12 and 20 tons (i.e., between 16 minus 4 and 16 plus 4 tons) as he would of 1

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getting a yield less than 12 or greater than 20 tons per acre. But in the former case the laws of chance would give him equal chances of getting a return lying within the narrower range of 14 to 16 tons. The figures in this case indicate to him how more closely, and therefore more reliably, he may expect to obtain a certain yield. It is the application of the statistical method of farming operations that is going to furnish results that have a real meaning and allow the farmer to know with reasonable accuracy how best to carry on his agriculture.—Post.