CROP SOWING DELAYED

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26399, 18 April 1951, Page 7

CROP SOWING DELAYED

HIGH RAINFALL IN BRITAIN

(Special ComwpaMdent Jt.Z.P.4.) (Rec. 9.30 pin.) LONDON, April 17. The heaviest rainfall in recent history has brought a crisis to British agriculture, which industrial correspondents say, faces its most serious sowing time emergency for 30 years. Farm work has been disastrousb’delayed by wet weather. In many places it is too late to sow and the unploughed, waterlogged land prill have to lie fallow throughout the summer. Sir James Scott Watson, chief scientific and agricultural adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture, predicted that Britain g total crop production would fall by about 20 per cent, this year because of the wet spring. He said he expected that the wheat target of 2.500,000 acres would fall short by 500,0C0 acres and the figure might well rise to 750,000 acres. • The Air Ministry, which operates Britain's weather stations, reported that 13.68 in of rain were recorded in London since the beginning of the year. This is more than has been registered in the first four months of any year since 1870.

So serious is the outlook, that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have authorised prayers in churches ter sunny weather to aid the nation's farmers.