BACK TO CROP FARMING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1939, Page 3

BACK TO CROP FARMING

CHANGE IN ENGLAND. DUE TO THE WAR. The plough is going forward with increasing confidence, and the picture of the English countryside is changing before our eyes as arable farming comes into its own again, writes a London correspondent. The quiet grass fields, untouched by any implement for many a year, have become busy, noisy scenes of life as tractor ploughs turn the thick mat of turf into glistening brown earth. One of the many queer things about this queer war is that it is making us farm more like our forefathers. But the more we get back to the old ways, the more we find ourselves in step with the latest teaching of such agricultural wizards as Sir George Stapledon. He, for instance, has shown that the stock-carrying capacity of the land can bo immensely increased by a system of ploughing up permanent grass from time to time, taking a corn crop or two, then sowing down to grass again. At the present time corn is our important need, but the land will not grow corn continuously and the day will come when it has to go back to grass for a time. Again, we were subsidising oats and barley growing before the war, not so much because we needed the oats and barley, but because growing them promotes good farming and helps to save the farmer from the blasts of any economic ill-wind that affects the price of feeding stuffs in any country in the world. This policy, desirable from the point of view of good arrangement of the land in peace-time, becomes even more essential in time of war.