USING THE LAND

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 145, 16 December 1933, Page 9

USING THE LAND

WASTE TO FERTILITY

FARMING TRIUMPH

LLOYD GEORGE'S METHOD

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, November 7. Mr. Lloyd George has a 500-acre estate at Churt, Surrey, which for ten years he has been farming—producing, among other things, fruit, pigs, and poultry. His earliest planted orchard has already come into profit, bearing on a commercial scale. Mr. P. W. D. Izzard, the agricultural correspondent of the "Daily Mail," spent the dny at Churt yesterday with Mr. Lloyd George. As a result he says that tho farmeivpolitician has made his estate outstanding among tho farmed lands, of England, and he gives a very interesting account of the procedure which has been adopted. During the tour, Mr. R. Hatton (director of the East Mailing Beaearch Station), Mr. J. H, Mattinson (agricultural organiser for Surrey), a»d, Professor K. G. Stapleflon (grass expert, University of Wales, once in New Zealand) joined the party. Mr. Lloyd George pointed to a wide tract of rough ground on which pigs were routing. "There are. my pioneers," he said. "I have 500 pigs doing the first clearing of that land. That has been my method. First the pigs, and when they have routed out all they can, the tractor follows. Then comes tho feeding of the land. You see for yourself what tho soil is—sand, and nothing but sand. Tako up a handful of it, and you cau blow it away. The first crop on it is lupins, which aro dug in.to mako humus, and this is done for several seasons, One or two crops of vegetables como next. Then there is the question of the right manures to use, and following that, the right trees to plant, I hava had most valuable help from Mr. Hatton and Mr. Mattinson." PROFESSOR STAPLEDON'S HELP. Speaking to Mr. Izzard of land reclamation and restoration in this country, Mr. Lloyd George said that Professor Stapledon's work in Cardiganshire, on the highlands "of which country ho has enabled three sheep to thrive where before one hardly could pick a living, had been an inspiration to him in his, own reclamation work in the Surrey highlands. "Stapledon also has given me valuable advice," he said. "British producers do not take the advantage which one would expect of the knowledge obtained for them by our great research workers. That is a point •which should be brought home to them all." Mr, Izzard was amused at the very thorough grubbing which Mr. Lloyd George's pigs were giving his land. These porcine labourers were making holes in some places, which Mr. Lloyd George pointed out, "as large as shell holes." Working in scrub, they were leaving standing nothing but an occasional oak sapling. They wore a mixed crowd of white, black,v spotted, and blue pigs, mainly hybrids, but they were not' Mr. Lloyd George's bacon pigs. Ho showed the latter herd in another plantation, doing the same work. His aim is to get a herd of 1000 pigs of the best haeon type. . ; On another part of the estate, Mr. Izzard had a panoramic view of some 4000 head of poultry, of proven utility breeds and including a fine lot of geese. A PKOVIDEB OP WORK. Then they reached a high and dense hedge. "This," the owner stated, "is coming down. It was necessary when the fruit trees were younger, but a screen is no more wanted. I have added six acres to cultivation by scrapping useless hedges, and here you see men who wore unemployed carrying on the task for me. It shows you what reclamation work can do to solve this problem. . "The estate formerly employed three men; now 21 are in regular work, and a great deal more labour is taken on for fruit picking and other seasonal jobs." ~..'■ It is about his fruit, and the gradual bringing into planting condition of field after field, the reader is told, that Mr. Lloyd George .is most enthusiastic. Forty-six more acres of fruit trees are to be planted this season, which will bring the orcharding up to more than 100 acres. "There are reclamation and restoration," he said, "both of the highest value. Most' of this land has been reclaimed from a state of absolute wildernesis; tho rest has been restored after lying derelict many years. It is typical of a vast amount of land in this country. ' . : : "The landlord is 'broke.' He cannot find the .money. I have been able to find it because I have other means of Income. But money for this national need should be found by the State. In the long run it would be a far sounder proposition than paying the workless a weekly allowance and keeping them idle. The extra £1 or so per week per man which it might cost would have something of great worth to show in waste land made fertile. It would also preserve tho tnoralo of the men, and by keeping the country-bred people in the villages preserve that fine physiquo of the rural population, which is so valuable a national asset. Mussolini, the greatest statesman in. the world today, is doing it, and I believe Hitler is doing it."