FARMING METHODS IN ENGLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 138, 2 December 1911, Page 4

FARMING METHODS IN ENGLAND.

A scathing indictment of the English farmer's ignorance of modern methods of agriculture, and of his lack of business ability, appears in Pearson's Magazine. The writer shows that while English farmers keep repeating the parrot cry that farming does not pay, the foreign farmers are reaping a golden harvest. Take wheat, for instance. Great Britain only 00 years ago had ov«r 13 million acres under wheat. Now there are only 1,700,000 acres, and, as a consequence, of the 32, 1 000,'00 quarters ot wheat we need produce only 0,000,000. Foreign farmers went to England to learn the most. advanced and effective methods of food production. "With the help of their Governments, who attached specially selected ollieials, they arranged visits of whole farmers' clubs or sent delegates, and inspected our English 'star farms,' making copious notes as they went about. When they returned, the Governments took good care to get value for their money by putting a detailed report of their discoveries in the hands of every county council lecturer and official of every farmers' society. But while we have let 13,000,000 acres of the finest arable land fall down to grass, and the people formerly employed upon it out of work and on the parish, Continental countries have laid correspondingly vast areas of poor land down to wheat, and thereby enormously increased home employment," So with regard to potatoes. Germany has profited by British indolence. ''On the methods learned from us she is raising to-day a quarter of the whole crop ol Europe and the United States." So with regard to bacon. The Danish farmers making butter had ocean.? of separated milk to spare. They resolved to use it for feeding pigs. They got the finest breeds of pigs from Yorkshire and Berkshire, and learned Wiltshire methods of feeding and curing, and now Denmark sends England every year £8.000,000 worth of the finest pork and bacon. Belgium, with a denser population to the square mile than England, produces for every cultivable acre ,£ - 20 worth of good. England produces ;C4 worth. If she adopted the Belgium standard of production she would not only be able to produce every ounce of food required by man and beast in the country, but become once more a food-exporting countrv.