BEST SIZED HOLDING

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 454, 8 September 1928, Page 27

BEST SIZED HOLDING

EXPERIENCE IN ENGLAND From indications given by the examination of about ninety accounts of farms of every description in Yorkshire, an eminent English authority recently announced that the farm of about 100 acres was the best economic

unit, in an address on farm profits and farm losses given before a large gathering of Northamptonshire farmers. He had found the peak of maximum efficiency was reached on a holding between 60 and 150 acres. Success was not to be found either in extremely small holdings or in large ranch or industrial farms. In closely studying the accounts for the past six months, he said "'they did not make pleasant reading, but they certainly raised the hope that the wave of agricultural de-

pression, with its bad prices for pro- ; duce, had to some, if not to a larger extent spent itself. In the accounts j of 90 farmers there was a deficiency in 1 1921-22 of £2 10s 6d an acre, or nearly 18 per cent, on the capital invested, jln 1922-23 the loss was 28s an acre, !or 11 per cent. Since then they had held their own. In 1923-24 the surplus was equal to 3 i per cent, on the capital invested; 1924-25, 4 per cent; 1925-26, 2i per cen.; and 1926-27, 3j per cent.

The “Daily Chicago Drovers' Journal” recently published an account of a breeding ewe, ill on board a ship at sea, saved by radio. The article stated that “a radio message giving her symptoms was sent to a Scottish veterinarian, and he prescribed treatment that saved her.”