AGRICULTURAL AFFAIRS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 13, 16 January 1909, Page 12

AGRICULTURAL AFFAIRS.

THE PROBLEM OF PASTURES. HOW TO FARM WITHOUT MANURES. "To raise a thick turf on a naked soil would be worth volumes of systematic knowledge." — White of Selborne. The most serious problem before the farmer of New Zealand and, indeed, ot almost every other country of the world, j is the gradual depreciation of the soil. ' At the last annual meeting of the Farmers' Union particular mention was made of the universal fact that pastures throughout New Zealand were deteriorating. The immense and practically insuperable cost of repairing the losses of plant food by artificial manures impressed itself on the gathering. With the enormous number of carcases exported yearly and the gradual disappear anc a of the sources of natural manures, it is quite clear, that the situation is yearly becoming more serious. Farmyard manure in England is a diminishing quantity. In New Zealand it does not exist in the same sense at all. The position may be less acute here than in older countries, but still is grave enough to demand investigation for all possible remedies. Now there is a farmer in the Lowlands of Scotland who claims to have solved the problem. This is Mr. Robert 11. Elliot, of Clifton Park, Kelso, whose method of farming is probably known to a few agriculturists as " The Clifton Park System." Says Mr. Elliot in the course of an invaluable article in tha November World's Work : — The solution of all our agricultural difficulties resolves itself into the cheap production of a good turf. The production of stock at the lowest possible cost is -what the farmer has to rely on nowadays, and this, ot course, involves the production of the food of the stock at the lowest possible cost. The success of our agriculture depends, in the first place, not, as the average farmer says, on raising prices, but on the cheapening of production. Second, the cheapest food for stock is grass. Third, the cheapest manure for soil is a turf composed largely of deeprooting plants. Finally, the cheapest, deepest, and best tillers, drainers, and warmers of" the soil are the roots o! plants. Mr. Elliot has expounded his gospel of grass-farming in a book entitled "Tho Clifton Paik System of Farming and Laying down Land to Grass." He says : Every agriculturist should lay to heart the truth that the physical condition of the soil, its permeability to roots, ils power of absorbing and retaining moisture, is of more importance, strictly speaking, than its chemical composition. By growing a mixture of large rooting and deep rooting plants, managing them well after they > have grown, and giving them four or six years time to form a turf, the farmer, when he again ploughs up the land, starts his rotation with the same advantages which the farmers had when they enclosed and ploughed up old pasture lands. First, he will produce good crops at the smallest expense. In the second places, he will produce his good crops without the did of manure, excepting some artificials with ljis turnips, and eventually without ari& when tfce land has become sufficiently ftarged with humus. At first the process* must only be continued for four years. 1 ™ After the turnip crop, taken after ploughing up the grass, the cereal crop wfll be grown. Then a root crop will follow. The next year the land will be again laid down to grass with a light cereal crop, and the process of forming a good turt recommenced. Every time this course is repeated, the land obviously becomes richer and warmer, and the soil more deeply and thoroughly disintegrated by the roots of plants, and therefore more able to yield better and more certain crops, and crops less liable to disease. ' Mr. Ellio'. sows heavily. In one year in the famous Bank Field of a poor quality of soil he laid down the ! following mixture per acre :—Cocks- ! foot, 141b ; tall fescue, 71b ; tall oat-like grass, 71b ; rough-stalked meadow grass, lib ; late flowering red clover, 21b ; white clover, 21b ; alsike, lib ; yarrow, lib ; burnet, 81b ; kidney vetch, 31b ; chicory, 31b ; total, 491b to the acre. £ Tho success of Mr. Elliot's system has been well tested and recognised by experts. From year to year his capital, the fertility of his soil, has been increased, not diminished. Where he found six inches 'of soil, he has now nine inches of finely worked stuff. He confidently recommends his idea to the farmers and owners of all soils but heavy clays. His ideas shoi^d be of valu« to New Zealand. The recent discovery of hydatids among rabbits in various parts of New Zealand reveals a grave danger to the community of contagion. Hydatids are singularly tenacious of life, and may be communicated in several ways. Dogs are very susceptible, and the disease is not seldom contracted by children through caressing animals. It would be well if the Veterinary Department and Health Department would take steps to see, first, if the disease tends to the extermination of rabbits, and secondly, if means can be taken of preventing communication to human beings. Mr. Frank Moore, of Bushy Park, Kai Iwi, writes as follows to the Pastoralists' Review : — "During the past two winters I have been struck by the marvellous capability of Hereford* cattle to live on practically nothing. I have had weaners and two-year-olds on rough bush, log country running \vitl) sheep, and throughout the winter there was absolutely no feed for cattle. Yet they managed to live, and when the spring grasj came threw off their old coats and put on condition wonderfully. After my experience I have no hesitation in fcaying that «ad these cattle been Shorthorns they would certainly have ] been all dead. lam not saying this because 1 am prejudiced in favour of Hereford cattle, but because 1 believe it to be the simple truth. 1 am convinced that on -good country one could fatten two ITcreforcis to one Shorthorn, and on rough country carry three Herefords to one Shorthorn ; also, that the former would come out better than the latter, even under these conditions." The advice wmch the skilled agricultural writer to the London Times gave to thfe British farmers as to the disposal of their superabundance of autumn grass, etc., will apply with singular aptness to New Zealand farmers just now. He said : "There is more grass than can be consumed, and, with some, the question arises as to how the superfluous supplies can best be utilised. It cannot, of course, bu made into hay so late in the season, and, as it is scarcely desirable to leave the soft herbage to be cut by frost, the best plan would probably be to make it into silage. It is well suited for this purpose, and wellmade silage would come in very con venient in the event of roots running short iv the spring. It is not often that silage is made so late in the year, but this is due to lack of material', rather than to inapplicability of the system, and tho experiment would be well worth trying where there is more grass than can be consumed as pasturage " For Bronchial Coughs take Woods* Grv.at Peppermint Cure. la 6d. — Advt.