MECHANISED FARM

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 8, 1 September 1931, Page 5

MECHANISED FARM

ASTOUNDING RESULTS ENGflNER-FARMER ABOHSHES THE HORSE. TWO MEN AND TWO TRACTORS. Engineering knowledge and orgar nising skill applied to farming have brought to a Hampshire farm results so staggering as to be almost incredible. It is a 1000 acre area where the tractor has entirely banished the horse, writes a British agricultural correspondent. Mr. Roland Dudley, a civil engiueer, who owns an estate at Linkenholt Manor, Andover, Hants., found himself two and a half years ago left with this farm on his hands. After some experience of running it by the orthodox system, under a bailiff, and losing money, he determined that it should be made to pay. j He took over the management of the j 1 farm himself, and by developing an | entirely new mechanised system of corn-farming he has put England back on„the map as one of the best eountries for corn-growing in the world. Two men and ' two tractors cultivate the whole 500 acres of arable land with such ease that last year Mr. Dudley was able to plough an extra 120 'acres for his neighbours. At least twelve men and seven or eight pairs of horses would by ordinary methods have been required. - He is producing wheat at a cost of £3 per acre, but he is not satisfied with this incredible figure, and means 1 to reduce it still further. One Operation. He showed me one thirty-four-acre j field of barley which he has ploughed, twice cross-ploughed, harrowed, drilled with seed and three fertilisers, harrowed again and rolled at a total operating cost of £13 10s. By the old method the corresponding figure might well have been £150. He now has sixteen-furrow ploughs pulled by the same power that normally used to pull at most four furrows; he drills forty-five rows at a time instead of the usual fifteen; he uses harrows three times as wide as any I have ever seen, and collects and threshes his crop in one operation with a combined harvester-thresher that saves him at least 30 per cent, of the cost of the old method. A mechanical drier dries the grain, that is brought straight in from the field by lorry and dried in the barn. Ingenious Device. When the grain is not very wet an ingenious device enables the engine of the drier to use the heat of its own exhaust to do the drying, cutting out the expense of the usual coke furnace. Beside the drier is a corngrinding mill operated by the engine that makes the electric light for the house and buildings, thus doing the grinding for practieally nothing. Needless to say, the inventor was regarded as mad a year ago. Now ' people are coming from everywhere to learn from him. | "I can produce corn in competition i with any one in the world," said Mr. Dudley to me, "excluding, of course, i Russia — the unknown quantity — and dumped produce. Canada, Australia, . or the Argentine may have low rents and virgin soil, but it costs them about 12s 6d per quarter merely to get their corn from their farms to England. We have also other advantages." Mr. Dudley pays his men more than the fixed farm wage, gives them their cottages, and also a bonus on production, that last year amounted to £7 or £8 apiece. They prefer this type of farming, and would not willingly g-o "clod-hopping" again.