REFLECTIONS ON BRITISH AGRICULTURE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 167, 20 April 1871, Page 7

REFLECTIONS ON BRITISH AGRICULTURE.

What changes are eomiiiir slowly, but surely, over the agricultural mind ! The man who twenty years ago chaffed Mechi for recommending straw as food for cattle is now found chaffing his own straw for his own cattle ; so that we have, in reality, a great increase of agricultural chaff. While the steam engine hum of our thrashing machine was in full play to-day, into the pulper went cabbages, mangolds, with their tops ; kohi rabi, ditto ; said I to my cattle-feeder, " George, hand-power wouldn't do for this." "No," said he, "nor horse-power neither." So that we came to the conclusion that every arable farm of 150 to 200 acres should have a fixed steam engine, with its accompaniment of pulpers, crushers, chaft-cutters, pumps, sack-elevators, millstones, threshing machine, cakebraker, and grindstone — a circular saw would be of no use to us, as our timber departed some twenty -five years ago. How can agriculture progress without steam-power? And yet its use is very partial and limited. When I began farming hero, 27 years ago, guano was unknown, steam was a myth, iron sheep hurdles were condemned as an extravagance, and even to this day nine farmers out of ten do not deepen their cultivation by following the first plough by another drawn on the same tract. Deep draining in strong, non-calcarious soils is the exception and not the rule, the argument being that there is a good surface fall for the water to pass away. Of course, they do not reflect thai water will not run off" the surface until the soil is super-saturated, and they would condemn such a practice as folly in the case of their flower-pots having a plug in them to stop the drainage. Altogether, Britain is not half manured nor half farmed, and our landowners and farmers conjointly must accept this as a true proposition, and conclude that there is an immense field open and awaiting the joint action of increased intelligence and action to produce more abundantly and more profitably food for the British people. I know that I have in my time shocked many prejudices, and excited much anger ; but has not every man clone so who attacks antiquated customs, and advocates changes and improvements ? The supporters of the old spinning wheel, distaff, and flail, destroyed the newly invented cotton machinery and threshing machines. It was natural, through a mistake; the conservative sentiment in favour of old institutions is an honest and" desirable one up to a certain point, but it is the fight for progress and improvement which introduces us to a new state of thing 3 more suitable to our welfare. — J. J. Mechi, September, 1870.