1946 ENGLAND'S WORST FARM YEAR SINCE 1879

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5286, 24 December 1946, Page 5

1946 ENGLAND'S WORST FARM YEAR SINCE 1879

LONDON, December 21. The year 19 18 will go down in history as Britain's worst farming year since 1879, says the Sunday Express' agricultural correspondent. A bad autumn follcwed a disastrous harvest. To-day more tlian half the farmlands are either too sodden or too frozen for cultivation, and. onlj'i a fraction of the 1947 eorn cro-ps has been sown. Much wheat just sprouting has been drowned. Most of the wheat for the 1947 harvest will have to be sown in the snring, which means lighter crops. Sugar beet in some areas is still in the fields, and the promised record yield may not be realised. Root crops are frozen m their clamps and will probably rot when the thaw comes. Faimers forecast a sharp drop in millc yields in February an'd March, when feeding stuffs will be practically finished. * Experts estimate that so many men have left the land that only 10,000 above the prewar figures will be available in 1947, despite the largelyincreased acreage under production. Half of Britain's agriculture maehinery is being exported, and farmers everywhere are protesting against ihe shortage of spares. The thaw which set in throughout England to-day broug'ht conditions near normal. An Air Ministry weather forecast said warmei weather was on the way. The temperature in London before noon was 18 ilegrees above ^ that of 24 hours previously.