MECHANISED FARMING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 June 1938, Page 3

MECHANISED FARMING

GREAT VALUE OF TRACTORS IN WAR TIME. • ‘‘The intensive mechanisation of agriculture alone can save the people of this country from starvation in the event of war,” declared Mr T. A. Wedderspoon, Castleton, Eassie, speaking at a meeting of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Agricultural Discussion Society. ■ “Figures show," he said, “that in the 19 years since the war we have lost the same acerage of arable land as it took us 42 years to lose before the war. and in the event of an emergency a farm horse cannot be produced in a -few weeks. It takes years, but this is not so with tractors.” Viscount Traprain, of Whittingehame, East Lothian, who presided, and who has himself demonstrated the efficiency of mechanised farming, said that the tractor was a coming implement, and he was convinced that .it was going to come even on grazing '* land. A friend of his, who had a purely hill farm, had gone in for a caterpillar- tractor, which he was using as a means of taking hay to his sheep. That tractor had to go through snow, and work under conditions which no horse could face.