NEW FARMING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 March 1939, Page 3

NEW FARMING

DEVELOPMENTS IN SCIENCE AND PRACTICE. WIDENING OF KNOWLEDGE. Pioneer farmers did not depend upon scientists, but upon experience, writes Mr Fred. K. Howard, American agricultural writer. That attitude, he says, had a tendency to narrow the range of farming practice because individual experience in the old days was limited. Modern farmers are more apt to depend upon scientific research than experience. This had led to the adoption of some practices which are not entirely practical. Even so, the introduction of science has done much to Widen the scope of farming practice. There is no good reason why any average progressive farmer should fail to master a working knowledge of the basic facts comprising the half-dozen or more related sciences which, fitted together, complete the jig-saw puzzle we call farming or agriculture. But farmers can widen their knowledge of both practical and scientific farming most quickly and soundly by visiting progressive farmers in other districts, bv inspecting experimental farms and research stations, and by travelling in other countries than their own where the conditions of farming and the objectives are similar to those of their own.