FARMING IN DENMARK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1938, Page 3

FARMING IN DENMARK

YESTERDAY AND TODAY. PAGEANT OF THE LAND. COPENHAGEN, June 16. Exactly 150 years ago Denmark’s peasantry was freed from the feudal system by which it held its land in strips as villeins or serfs. It is an occasion to Denmark to celebrate 150 years of agricultural progress, and on the hill called Bellahoj, the beautiful hill overlooking Copenhagen, a great agricultural show has grown up to be opened by King Christian X on Saturday. It will last for 10 days. Today has been press-view day for journalists from Great Britain, France, Germany, and other countries of farm stock brought together in competition. Though competition has its part, the show is a complete picture of Danish agriculture today and yesterday. Indeed, it is almost the picture of a nation wrought on a green canvas larger than the show yard of the English Royal Show, for into its building has gone the sense of design and bright colour of a nation of ingenious craftsmen as well as farmers. The Danish flag, a white cross on a red ground, flies from white poles at regular intervals over the whole ground, and behind' the handsome gateway thousands of blooming roses make the frontispiece of a veritable picture-book of Danish history. For the last week or so mounted postmen in old-time uniforms have been riding from all parts of the country to deliver horse-carried mail at the show as in 1788, perhaps, to the ancient farm Gevninge which has been erected here, or at the halftimbered old smithy from Aasum, in Funen, or at the old school from Stevns built in 1709. Inside the historical pavilion pictures by Rasmus Christiansen tell the story of Danish agriculture in these 150 years, just as episodes from that history will be played in the great open-air theatre close by. It is from that point that any view of the exhibition starts in spirit, and it is from there one gets one initial background to the whole. A modern smithy in full operation and electrically equipped contrasts with the old one from Aasum; a new small holding, of which about 20,000 have been built since 1919 under the Small Holding Act, shows the neat house and buildings of a Danish family farm complete to nursery, in which the children’s beds are one above the other, like berths in a ship, to save space. • The Royal Veterinary College has a model cowbyre and a model piggery of the latest type, and the co-opera-tive movement, which is the very foundation of Danish agriculture since 1888, tells of the parts they play today in pictures, charts, and pictorial graphs, gaily coloured like Scandinavian embroidery. But it is not a question of harsh contrasts. From 1788 to 1938 the story is told in the model villages through which journalists walked today like modern Gullivers in Lilliput. There is a village of 1788 faithfully reproduced, with its strip fields and the church bell ringing; the same village in small holdings with its own fields and thatched roofs; still later the modern small holdings with their red tiles.

One thousand five hundred cattle, picked from the best stocks of the' country during the winter and spring, are coming into their lines ready for Saturday’s opening event from as far away as Greenland.’ An army of workers are busy with saw and hammer, with brush and electric wire, putting the final touches to an agricultural show which on Saturday will become Denmark in spirit and in fact. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in South Jutland caused some anxiety, but the same policy as is used in England has been adopted here, slaughtering affected herds and contacts, and the result is that 95 per cent to 99 per cent of the chosen animals will be here. With Danish thoroughness no chances are being taken. Every animal has been inoculated with a German serum giving 10 days’ immunity before it came, and it will be inoculated again before it returns. Meanwhile, in co-operation with Sweden, a determined and highly organised campaign is being carried on to prevent any further spread of the disease from other affected parts of Europe.