FUTURE OF FARMING IN ENGLAND.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 327, 4 February 1874, Page 3

FUTURE OF FARMING IN ENGLAND.

[From the " Pall if all Gazette."] Every one who attempts to get a .hearing for important questions before they reach the " burning " stage is doing a good work, and the letter addressed by Mr. Jefferies to the "Times" on the "future of farming "is an attempt of this kind. No one can deny that all the data from which Mr. Jefferies starts are strictly ascertained, and sooner or later we shall hare to face the question to which they give rise. It is perfectly true that England is every year becoming more and more an exclusively meat producing country, and yet from the steady rise in the price of meat, from the extreme sensibility of the market to slight disturbances, and from other signs, it is evident that the supply has a difficulty in keeping pace with the demand, and that Mr. Jefferießis notunduly an alarmist in his view that "if the population should continue to increase in its present ratio the margin between an inadequate supply and a partial famine would be very small indeed." And the difficulty of increasing production is, as he rightly points out, not a question of the conditions of land tenure, however it may be the fashion to refer it to this. More meat means in the present high-pressure days simply more artificial food, and more artificial

food meanes mow artificial manure ; and I " supposing," as he says, " that compensation for unexhausted improvements was the rule, and supposing unlimited capital was ready to invest, where then would the artificial food and artificial munure in such enormous quantities be obtainable? The present source* rwould simply materially raise their price," so that the influx of capital would be balanced. Mr. Jefferies' solution — or rather his hope for a solution — lies in the productive powers of our colonieß. It may yet come to pass, he thinks, that these vast uninhabited regions may produce some vegetable in quantities sufficient to feed the stock of the future, or some mineral manure with power to treble the amount of our home crops of cattle food. Even this, however, leaves still open a question which we think will one day demand serious attention. What iB the effect of tht high-pressure system of cattle breeding on the character of the meat? Has it not already tended (as wo ourselves believed to be the case), and must it not tend still more in the future, to a degradation of the quality, or, in other words, to a diminution of the nutritive properties of the meat, which will be by no means compensated by theincreaseinquantity? If increasing plenty is to balanced by continuous degeneration, we do not really get nearer to the solution to the problem of meat supply.