A RUINED HARVEST.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 56, 30 October 1912, Page 8

A RUINED HARVEST.

The summer and autumn had been so wet, that in winter the corn, was growing yet-—so ran the beginning of some verses that used to be in the school reading books. Almost as bad is England’s plight this year. Recent London papers show that the damage caused by an unusually wet summer was very heavy. “From almost every quarter,” writes a correspondent, in a summary of the havoc wrought, “come daily tidings of corn and hay floating in masses down the rivers, corn sprouting as it stands, hay given away as litter for pegs, as not worth carting away as manure.” The Old Country has become so great a manufacturing country, and so much has been written about the decay of her agriculture, that il 'may surprise some people to learn that according to the Daily Mail in England alone the hay crop is worth twenty-two millions, the potato crop thirteen millions, and the oats crop fourteen mill.ons. The seriousness of this year’s disaster lies in the fact that each of these three crops was badly affected. Last year some of the Fen farmers were offered over £3O per acre for their potato crops as they were, the buyer undertaking to harvest them. This year some farmers who have spent £lO or more per acre on the crop will not nearly recover their expenses. In August conditions were more or less normal in Norfolk and Essex, and-not calamitous in some Midland! counties. But north of Cambridgeshire,' where the loss was considerable, and all along the west coast and to a lesser degree over the rest of the country, no such calamitous harvest has been recorded for years. When the rain had fallen in Cheshire for forty hours continuously, and Gloucestershire and Derbyshire had had thirty hours, it was thought the worst was Aver, but after a day’s respite, tropical downpours began again, and as much as six inches fell in twelve hours. The extraordinary spectacle was presented of farmers harvesting in gumboots and literally dredging for hay. It is clear that England will have to make heavy calls on foreign and colonial produce in the coming year.