Plan To Improve Tillage

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31363, 8 May 1967, Page 7

Plan To Improve Tillage

A plan to extend activities of the World Ploughing Organisation to underdeveloped countries was discussed at Lincoln College at the week-end by Professor K. Lammel, of the College for Horticulture and Viticulture in Budapest.

The aim is to improve cultivation techniques and crop yields. Professor Lammel, who was formerly head of the soils department in the Hungarian Agricultural Research Institute, has been a member of the board of the World Ploughing Organisation since 1962 and chairman of its tillage research committee since 1965. In the under-developed

countries, with mainly hot and dry climates, there was a great need for the benefits that would attend the holding of ploughing competitions, Professor Lammel said.

Recently he had been in Chile, where they used mainly disc ploughs, and he had been told that one piece of ground could be worked five times. This was very expensive and it was important for this country that good mouldboard ploughs and good ploughing techniques be introduced. In countries like Turkey, Greece, India and Kenya, and perhaps Chile, it was proposed that demonstrations should be given by world

champion ploughmen using various tillage implements. These would be given in association with an agricultural fair when there would be a lot of people present.

It was planned also that research areas with crop and pasture sown by these techniques should be laid out and subsequently measured by a research institute in that country.

The result would be that people would get a knowledge of what made good ploughing and cultivation, and it was proposed that ploughing matches would be organised and that these countries would come into the World Ploughing Organisation.

The ultimate objective was to achieve higher crop yields through, good ploughing and cultivation.

In 1961, after being present at the world ploughing contest in Rome in the previous year, Professor Lammel reintroduced ploughing matches in Hungary after 48 years. Now some 15,000 ploughmen take part jn matches every year. Singe 1961 crop yields had risen by about 20 per cent, he said. He said he would not claim that this was entirely due to the effect of ploughing matches, as more fertiliser and machines were being used.