CHANGING COLOUR OF ENGLAND.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17401, 11 March 1922, Page 2

CHANGING COLOUR OF ENGLAND.

•' , v . The-'sceiiery "ofEngland.. is being' changed at. a rate scarcely paralleled in recent annals by the fraptic. efforts of farmers to reduce costs (says the London "Daily Mail"). The.collapse in the price of com, the heavy losses on potatoes and roots,'the difficulty "-of getting credit, have persuaded scores, indeed hundreds, of farmers...to substitute land ■ _ for plough l'artdr ' Examples may be given from almost every county. On one large Hertfordshire farm every single field is now being put down to grass, and corn growing and potato growing will be wholly surrendered for stock •raising. • Those who travel about England in the coming spring will find the whole colour of fie landscape changed. Even some of the most characteristic farm lands will begin to resemble such essentially grazing counties as Leicestershire. Bad times in farming always extend the area under grass, but the present movement Shows signs of multiplying at a rate that will put the depressed years of "the hungry 'eighties" quite in the shade. Already the population even of small villages is proving too numerous for the Work available, oiviiig to thinner cultivation and much reduced labour on such necessary work as hedging and ditching.