BRITISH AGRICULTURE

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 September 1943, Page 6

BRITISH AGRICULTURE

LOOKING BACKWARD.

Sir John Russell recently broadcast in the B.B.C’s short wave overseas service a review of Britain’s agriculture. He said: — I wasn’t brought up to agriculture -r-but I took to it as a young man for the same reason as many other young men have done —because I wanted to do so—and as with many other young men against the advice of my elders and betters. At that time —it is 40 years ago now —1 was lecturer in chemistry at one of our big Universities: my Professor was very annoyed about my choice. “Agriculture,” he said, “why, there is no career in that—you will only waste your time and throw away the chance of a professorship if you don’t keep on with your chemistry.” But I was adamant or obstinate, whichever way you like to put it: a small post was going at an Agricultural College that would enable me to learn agriculture while I was earning my living, and I decided to apply for it. Another of my Professors knew all about Agricultural Colleges: he had served on the committee of one of them, and he gave me his advice: “.If you really want the job you must, go up to the interview in a frock coat and a tall hat: that’s the way to impress a farmers’ committee.” I hadn’t got cither of these things, but I reflected that some day I might need them, and anyway—“ Nothing venture, nothing win,” sc. T made a very big hole in my very meagre savings, bought a tall hat and a frock coat, went up to the interview, got the job, reported to the Professor, who ever afterwards remained convinced of the efficacy of tall hats and frock'coats, at least for agricultural posts. So I went down to Wye College to learn agriculture and to teach chemistry. just 40 years ago. I soon saw tha+ my Professor had some justification for his very pessimistic outlook. For British agriculture was then undoubtedly in a bad way: for nearly 15 years wheat and meat had been pouring into the country .from overseas at prices.below the cost of production here. Many farmers were just about bankrupt: wages were down: in some places only 12/- a week was paid: men were leaving the land as quickly as they could: even the Government saw little hope, and a high official had declared that British agriculture was dead, and the only thing to do was to bury it decently. However, people didn’t want that so the Government decided to try what education would do, and they set up Agricultural Colleges I'roi'n about 1894 onwards: it was to the College at Wye I went in 1901. SHORTAGE OF TEACHERS. The great trouble in those days was the shortage of competent teachers. There were people with some knowledge of science but with no glimmering of an idea of farming: some of them were 1 none too sure of the difference between a cow and a bullock. Others had got on moderately well by claiming to be practical men when they were among men of science, and scientists when they were among farmers. Well, of course, I hadn’t given up a good job at the University to play that sort of a game, and I at once started in to learn all I could on the farm: I worked with the cowman and the pigman and in the dairy, and I took an allotment to learn gardening from the very good village workers. They gave me lots of good advice, more than I could’ always, profit by. There was one old man who always beat me at raspberries: do what’ I would I couldn’t get near to him. One day he confided in me the secret of his success. "“My old donkey died,” he said, “and I buried him under them raspberry canes. That’s what you want for good raspberries.” As dead donkeys aren’t easy to come by in an English village I never could test his explanation—all the same, I never equalled him as a raspberry grower. After a time I began to feel more confidence in going about among farmers and helping them out of their difficulties. Many of them were splendid craftsmen who knew their job thoroughly well, but unfortunately they knew only one kind of. farming. They were excellent at doing things as "’father had done them, but the trouble was that the women folk weren’t content to do as mother had ■done, and they had no more use for mother’s ways than for mother’s frocks. The world was changing rapidly, and some of the . farmers were getting left behind. The men who were quick-witted enough to spot the changes and adapt themselves to the new conditions —they began to prosper, and that was where the new education proved so useful: it made the young men more clastic minded: quicker to size up a situation and find some way round the difficulties.

I stopped seven years at Wye, and served a very useful apprenticeship there. Then I went on to Rothamsted, first as an assistant, then as Director. The place was very famous, but small and badly equipped, and I have had thirty years of building it up so that it can now fairly claim to be the best equipped agricultural experiment station in the Empire. And we’ve got a first-class staff. Our job was steadily becoming clearer. Townspeople were getting more money and demanding better quality and more varied food: more milk, more eggs, more vegetables and fruit and potatoes, more meat, especially young and tender meat. And scientists had to show farmers how they could produce these things economically and efficiently. I took the line that the soil is the basis of all agriculture, and

that proper and efficient soil management and crop production is the key to the farmers’ difficulties. So at Rothamsted we studied every branch of crop production: soil improvement, the efficient use of fertilisers, reduction of wasting and losses, ways of dealing with insect pests and crop diseases of all kinds. It has been extraordinarily interesting work, and it has succeeded because we have always been able to attract very competent young people, highly trained mon and women, to find out all they could about the soil or the crop and then we have tried to put this knowledge into a form in which farmers and experts could use it. That has always been the line at Rothamsted. We began our work 100 years ago this year—but John Bennet Lawes, who founded the place, had already been experimenting for about. five years before that. He was the first to make and sell superphosphate.

We neither make nor sell fertilisers, I but we do make large numbers of J experiments with them, and with I other aids to production to give farmI ers information on the basis of which • they can improve their farming. It '.is literally true that the surest way , I for a farmer to improve his farm .! is to begin by improving himself; to ;' study his problems as closely as he :; can. Our farmers have recognised . j that, and for a generation now they . i have been raising their standards of ■' efficiency, and done it so well that i before the war the output per man 'i on the farms of Great Britain was ; higher than in any country in Eur- : ope.