THE HUMBLE AND COMIC TURNIP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 218, 27 August 1943, Page 6

THE HUMBLE AND COMIC TURNIP

(Extracts trom a talk by

A. P.

O'SHEA

in the "Good Earth" series from 2YA)

LL of you have heard of the Industrial Revolution, and you all know of the distress it caused. Not so many people know that about the same time there was an agricultural revolution. This revolution caused little distress, In fact, it was a wonderful thing for England, It helped her to keep her leading place, not only in farming and stock breeding, but it also helped her to keep her leading position among the commercial and trading nations, Most of these changes were tied up with one little plant-the modest and humble, and even comic turnip. Strange as it may seem, this little plant had an immense influence on England’s agriculture, and also had an influence on her trade. Consequently, the turnip. had a great influence on her world position. I sense that you are thinking that this is a tall statement, and that you are asking "How do you make that out?" Let us see. Remember the Cinnamon ~ You all know Masefield’s poem "Cargoes," which deals with the changes in the merchandise carried by ships

through the centuries. You will probably remember the lines: "Stately Spanish Galleon with a cargo of diamonds, emeralds, amethysts, topazes and cinnamon, and gold moidores." Cinnamon was the chief commodity in that cargo, because it was for spices that ships went to the Indies. Treasure was part of the lure, and a very payable side-line, but cinnamon was the essential commodity. Why did these ships go to the Indies for spices? The answer is that spices were wanted because there was not feed for cattle in the winter. There was no refrigeration in those days, and many head of cattle had to be killed at the end of the autumn so that there would be enough feed left to carry the remaining stock. Thorold Rogers in his huge work on Agricultural Prices tells us that this wholesale killing took place about November 10 every year. The bulk of these carcases were salted down. The salt was obtained by evaporation of sea water. In dull, wet summers it was difficult to obtain, and the rise or fall in the price of salt was, therefore, in direct tatio to the amount of sunshine in any summer, Thus we can tell by the record

of salt prices the sort of weather they had in any year of those times. Good records have been kept of the salt prices, and they are an excellent substitute for meteorological data of those years, It is strange to reflect that we can tell the kind of summers they had 300 years ago by the price of salt at that date. However, to get back to our story. This wholesale salting down of carcasses had grave disadvantages, As the unsalted meat was kept as long as possible before the salted meat was started on, the fresh meat, or rather the unsalted meat, became fairly tasty, and the spices were used to tone down the rather full flavour. Then, after having eaten salt meat fér months on end in the year, people had to have some means of tempting their palates. We find, for example, such tempting dishes as spiced hedgehogs favoured by the epicures of the 16th Century. They also used spiced ale to wash down the very salt meat. You can realise how tough and lean the meat would be during the early summer, because it would take the animals some time to recover from the effects of the winter. And Now the Turnip Well, the general use of the turnip changed all this. We are not certain where the turnip came from, Some people say that it was brought from Saxony or one of the German States by Lord Townshend, but others tell us that turnips had been known and used since the beginning of the 17th Century. This is probably correct, but we know that they were sown broadcast very thickly, that they were not cultivated, and that the varieties were very crude. You all know the tremendous advances in plant breeding during the last 20 years. Two hundred years ago the turnip was beginning to go through a similar process of improvement and development. At the beginning of the 18th Century, Jethro Tull, the great English agriculturalist, started revolutionising farming. He improved tillage and cultivation, and he taught farmers to sow turnips in rows. He also taught them to thin turnips out, and to cultivate in between the rows. Labour was very cheap, relatively, at that time, and tillage operaions on the farm were comparatively easy. Then Lord (or "Turnip") Townshend came along and taught the principle of rotation of crops, and «he improved the strains of the turnip. He picked out the best of them, and thus obtained a reliable root for winter use. This better feed for stock opened the way for the great stock breeders-Bake-well with his Leicesters, Ellman renowned for his improvement in Southdowns, Colling who improved Shorthorns, and Tomkins, the real founder of the Hereford breed. . The improvement due to this better feeding was very marked. In the 90 years between 1710 and 1800 the average weight of bullocks at Smithfield-the (Continued on next page)

(continued trom previous page) London Meat Market-increased from 370Ib. to 800lb. The average weight of the sheep in the market increased from 28lb. to 80lb., and the weight of lambs from 18lb. to 50lb. Nowadays, we are going back to a smaller type. Effect on Enclosures This enlightened use of the turnip also had anotier effect on farming. At the beginning of the 18th Century, the strip or open field system was still in common use in England, There was no permanent fencing, and the farming was done from villages alongside these strips. There was uncultivated grazing land too, but the main farming was done on these strips. This system of farming had, however, grave disadvantages. It could be ploughed only one way, and the constant driving of ploughs along one line caused pans to form which made drainage difficult. The

use of the turnip helped to bring an end to the strip system, because with sheepfarming it brought fencing into common use.

Take Off Your Hat. to Him The turnip is still a useful citizen. Other stock foods, of course, are now available, and have challenged him, but he is still in a leading position. To-day we have concentrated foods and other root crops, and they are even using dried grass as a substitute for him. But although the turnip of to-day is merely a useful citizen of the vegetable kingdom, his great-grandfather was a benefactor of the British race. So the next time you see a turnip-whether it is in a field or on your own dinner table-just cast your mind back to the days of the salt meat and spiced hedgehogs, and you will realise that but for this humble plant England’s economic history might have been very different.