HOW FARMING MAY BE MADE TO PAY.

Waikato Times, Volume XV, Issue 1318, 9 December 1880, Page 3

HOW FARMING MAY BE MADE TO PAY.

when auch a course of seasons come as we have experienced, rents must be remitted and holdings given up.

The following is the full text of the essay which won the first of the Mark Lane Express prizes on the above subject. It was written by Mr. Robert Bruce, Manor House, Great Smeaton, Northallerton (formerly of Newton of Struthers, Morayshire), and will be read with special interest by his many friends and acquaintances, as well as with profit by the agricultural community : — The subject which I venture to take up is a very important and very wide one. I do not expect to be able to bring out any grand new idea, to that all the farmers who may re id this may at once turn what may be, and is, in a great many cases, a losing business into one of profit ; but I hope to iudicate in what wiy many may improve their present condition, and increase their income sit* farmers. Ido not hesitate to affirm that British farming may, can, and will be made profitable. I deprecate the idea so often expressed that large portions of the land must go out of cultivation, and that rents must be permanently reduced. Tho course of bad seasodb we have experienced' and the competition we have had to face, will, in my opinion, tend to the advancement of oiir profession. This at firot 6ijrht may seem paradoxical ; but I hold that adversity will rouse farmers to think, spur them to be independent (taken in its broadest meaning) of their landlords, show them the necessity of more modern covenants, bo that they can keep pace with the times, pay their rents, and make their business or profession a profitable one. The subject of farming profitably will at once be acknowledged to be a wide one, if one considers the different modes of farming that are necessary under different conditions throughout the length and breadth of the kiugdom. That which, for instance, applies to arable farming on the cold clays of Sussex can have no reference on the Moray coast ; and the grass-bind farmer in Sutherlandshire, muse manage his subject differently from his fellowfarmer in the Vale of Aylesbury . We need never look for a universal remedy for our different grievances, nor for any one to invent, ho to speak, a system of farming that can ensure profit in each individual case. To enable us to consider the question of profit in farming we may look at what, in my opinion, tends to retard the progress of agriculture, and without doubt reduces the chance of profit. I put them as follows -.—Antiquated Land Laws ; i Objectionable Estate Regulations ; Want of Capital in the Land ; Non-scientific Education of Farmers; Mismanagement : of Landed Estates.

Antiquated Land Laws. These, such as Law of Entail, Law of Distress, Hypothetic, Game Laws, &c, I merely mention, leaving to politicians the discussion of them, as I wish to make this part of the paper a practical farmer's exposition of the grievances from other causes in contradistinction to harms and hiudrances arising from antiquated Imperial laws. Such may have been necessary, I grant, in by-gone times j but these are wanting reconstruction in some cases, and abolition in others, as they affect the position of the farmer with his banker, placing him lower on the credit list than upstart speculators, while they encourage what I would next consider, viz. —

Objectionable Estate Regulations. I find estate regulations binding ten-ant-farmers to the most ridiculous contracts, laying down laws as to how a farm is to be cropped, and what a farmer is to do with what his farm produces. It is quite a common thing to find the same regulations binding over a large property, where the quality and composition of the soils vary so much that distinct and different modes of cultivation ought to be adopted. I find in a greater part of the kingdom yearly tenancy without tenant right, with its natural results, viz., land fanned from year to year, as it was done a hundred jears ago, undrained and unproductive, and a small proportion of farmers in ordinarily good seasons making a small profit out of the crops they grow, but not by any means so large as the land ought to produce. I find the larger proportion of fawuejra simply existing j ami