GRASS DRYING

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 15, 17 July 1937, Page 11

GRASS DRYING

TWO VALUABLE WORKS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, June 9^

Grass drying, now an established routine on several English farms, has been made the subject of two books. Both are entitled "Grass Drying," and the authors are Mr. S. W. Cheveley and Mr. E. J. Roberts. They have collected much useful information about the process.

Sir Daniel Hall, in a preface to Mr. Cheveley's book, suggests that, granted a sufficiency of dried young grass, the British farm can become self-support-ing for milk or meat production all the year round. , The -book shows how far the claims made for grass drying " have been proved in practice. Mr. Cheveley sees a big future for grass drying, especially because feeding-stuff prices have risen and the costs of drying should fall as a result of experience and improvement in. methods. He recognises that the great majority, of farmers in the British Isles are comparatively poor men with small farms and that it is impossible for them to find large sums of money for drying equipment. But with a bigger demand cheap driers could be obtained by mass production; he suggests that there is every reason to believe that with properly organised manufacture a drier to give an output of 4cwt an hour could be made profitably to sell at £300. Both books may, perhaps, be regarded as a sequel to the -preliminary report published two years ago by a research committee on the council formed with the co-operation of the Ministry of Agriculture to make an inquiry into the merit of the principle of grass drying artificially. Since then all sorts'of machines have been invented, both in England and on the Continent. . ■'

The , book by Mr. Roberts is a thorough and well-illustrated account of existing machinery and of recent work on the subject. The new methods, it is claimed, may be of value not only to farmers, but even to those who cut.lawn grass on playing fields and golf courses. The research committee includes under the general title of grass-drying the drying and culture of other fodder crops. Of these none . has more thoroughly surprised the growers than the newest type of white clover, which ■ spreads under . suitable conditions at a scarcely credible rate.