WOMEN FARMERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 20, 6 January 1912, Page 8

WOMEN FARMERS.

A Belgian correspondent of the London Standard gives an interesting account of what is being done there to lit women for work on the farm, .1 ho number of women engaged in agricultural work is no fewer than di-LUOU, whereas the numbers engaged in commerce and industry are respectively .‘15,000 and 32,500. Dairying aim! poultry-roaring are practically in the hands of the women altogether. According to the InspectorGeneral of Agriculture, the annual milk yield of the country amounts to £14,000,000, a sum about equal to the total annual railway receipts or lae average output of the coal mines, while the yearly revenue from poultry would do more than meet the War Office estimates. There is an old proverb that “the farmer’s wife can take more out of the farm in her apron than the ploughman can put into it with a four-horse team,” and recognising the truth of this, the Belgians nave determined that every girl on the land shall have an opportunity of becoming a thoroughly efficient housekeeper and farmer’s wife. Largely as a result of the teaching at the housewifery schools, as they are called, and the work of the associations of women farmers, which provide professional instruction for women in country districts, the great majority of small cultivators are prosperous and have comfortable homes. Instruction of a similar kind is given in England, but it is successful only with an entirely different class of wo r man. In England it is the highly educated women who arc showing an interest in improved methods of agriculture, while in Belgium the rural leaguers are almost entirely composed of the wives of small working farmers. In England the latter are occasionally interested by the courses of lectures arranged by the county councils, but it is comparatively rarely that permanent benefits ensue. A majority of the members of the Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural Union in England prefer a small mixed farm, where market-gardening, poultry raising and dairying can ho combined; but a few arc more ambitious. Two cases are mentioned of women managing largo holdings successfully, and the number of such cases will, no doubt, increase.