MILK SELLING AND FERTILITY.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2212, 12 September 1910, Page 7

MILK SELLING AND FERTILITY.

In a recent discussion opened by Mr. Druce before the Bedford Chamber of Agriculture the old bogey about the exhaustion of land by milk-selling has been trotted out once more. This has been so often met and laid before that one is entitled to ask why speakers and writers do not make themselves better acquainted with the facts. Mr. Druca is reported to have said that 600 gallons of milk contained the same amount of manurial ingredients as four quarters of wheat. As a matter of fact the milk contains a good deal less than this according to the Rothamsted figures, which show that even when the elements of fertility contained in the body of the calf produced by the cow are added on, the fertility removed is not so much as that in the wheat. But let that pass : the point is that Mr. Druce suppressed the fact (at any rate he is reported so) that four quarters of wheat are derived from one acre, whereas it requires three acres (and sometimes four) to produce 600 gals, of milk, and a calf, per annum. Six hundred gallons is the produce of a good cow in a year, and the average of the country is put at 450. But let that also pass : the important point remains that when the matter is calculated out to the acres, wheat is three times more exhaustive than milk. Indeed, if the figures are worked out more accurately, it will be found in many cases that wheat is four times more exhaustive than cows. Further, wheat leaves nothing behind it but its straw, whereas a cow will not yield GOO gallons of milk in a year without pretty liberal feeding with cake and meal, and her enriched dung goes back to the land. In the face of these facts, which have been published over and over again till one gets tired of them, we are entitled to ask what Is the sense or justice of keeping up the old fallacies. We can understand the antipathy that a “corn” man has to cowkeeping, but that need not make him unjust, and it is only fair to remember that cows have succeeded during the last twenty years where corn has failed. Cows have been kept in Cheshire for seven centuries, in Somerset for three centuries, and in Ayrshire for two and a half centuries, as cheeses have been made and sold of! during all that time, so no one need fear exhaustion of the soil. In our days the evil is still more remote when we use so much feeding stuffs and dress the pasture with slag.—“ The Dairy,’ * London.