PROGRESSIVE AGRICULTURE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 9168, 30 July 1890, Page 7

PROGRESSIVE AGRICULTURE.

[prom a correspondent.] Sib, —I have been long wishing to write to ask you to use your powerful influence to induce the Agricultural and Pastoral Association to alter their policy, of only looking after one of the interests they joined together, years ago, to foster and promote. For years they have done all that it is possible for the production of first-class stock of every sort, and there is no doubt in that they have been most successful; but, as I suppose, the end looked for was success to both the pastoral and agricultural interests, and as an outcome, wealth to the individual and the country, it would have been well to have looked a little further, than just the production of a well-bred animal. The old farmers at Home used to assert that half the breeding went in at the mouth, and really, looking at a well-fed animal, one can understand the assertion, and if the A. and P. Association would devote their energies one quarter as much towards the production of food to keep the good stock they have assisted to produce, as they have done towards its production, they would add most enormously to the wealth of the country. In these days, when we are depending entirely on our exports (wool, wheat and mutton), it may be said to be now entirely agricultural, and as our wealth depends entirely on our increasing, as far as possible, the produce of our agricultural lands, and enlarging the amount of our exports, it surely is not asking too much of our A. and P. Association to assist as much as possible the agricultural interest for two or three years (tor that time the breeding well-bred animals will take no'harm), and I feel convinced, that if it is done in a right direction, and with proper spirit, they will be surprised at the wealth they have been the means of helping to produce. Giving a few prizes to one or two farmers with Mechian propensities, will never be a means of producing more or cheaper produce, or more wheat or mutton. The fact is, what is considered good farming in England does not pay here. The successful man is he who produces the most valuable amount of produce at the least possible cost, and, therefore, there must be little interest to reckon on buildings, swell gates, and trim fences, &c. Look at nearly all the histories of the successful men of the plains lately recorded by you in the Canterbury Times. They have pretty well all just emerged from their sod or small wooden houses, in which they worked hard, and made their independence from the first, into their present homes. That is the sort of life that produces the independent working farmer. There seems to me to be only one way of improving our present position, and that is by lowering the cost of our produce. We have any amount of land that could, I am certain, double our export of frozen mutton (large as it now is) if there was any possible means of lowering the cost of cultivation. In this, much could be done with the assistance of the A. and P. Association, There are hundreds of thousands of acres of land capable of producing good crops of turnips, which are not worked because of the cost of cultivation. If any cheap means could be devised by steam, perhaps, and improved machinery for cultivating land, thousands more fat sheep could be easily produced, and be a source of wealth to the farmer and the country. If a cheap means of cultivation could be secured, at a coat, say, of three shillings an acre, it would be one of the first of all labour-saving machines; and who can tell the enormous amount of wealth that might-be produced from these

thousands of acres in turnips, rape, oats, &0., and in mutton for freezing. Two things are necessary to make it a success, cheapness and expedition—a means of doing from ten to fifteen acres a day with the labour of one man, and this, I believe, may be done, if assistance is given in a right direction. Of all modern machines, the one that has been least improved is the plough, the most important of all, because the extent of all farming operations depends on it. The only improvement made in it since our grandfathers used it has been to improve it from_ a sledge into a wheeled machine, but its work of cutting an oblong section of land by means of a vertical and horizontal knife, and packing it one furrow after the other, each with its moat objectionable air chamber underneath, remains the same. Surely it is time this time-honoured machine was improved off the face of the earth, and some more expeditious mode, with better cultivation or disintegration, substituted. All the new digging machines seem too slow, and take too much power to work to answer well in this Colony. If a good prize were offered by the A. and P. Association, all sorts of machines would no doubt he tried, under different conditions some with horse, some with steam power, and the one that could do the most effective work at the least possible cost would deserve the prize. I believe myself that in a very few years all the work on large farms of dry land will be done by steam power, aud the work of cultivation be four or five times as rapid as at present, and will be done at three shillings an acre. Why should nob we be the first to initiate such a system P Let the A. and P. Association consider well the immense advantage in a country like Canterbury, with its thousands of acres of level land, of instituting a mode of cultivation that could be carried on at the rate, say, of ten to fifteen acres a day, at a cost of throe shillings an acre. Letthem consider well the amount of wealth such a process of cultivation would produce, notalone through the small cost of one crop, but through successive crops, so quickly and cheaply produced that two or three crops would be produced on the same land at a very much less cost than one crop now, and very much to the advantage of the land from the manure distributed on it. I believe it will take years (and what a loss that will he to the Colony) before private individuals, without some assistance, can work out a good successful machine, as few people with the necessary knowledge have the means to go on with trials under difficulties; but let a good prize, say of £4OO or £SOO be offered for a machine that shall, with steam or horse power, cultivate at the rate of from ten to fifteen acres a day (land that has been cultivated before), at a cost not exceeding three shillings an acre, and you will set to work the brain of many an ingenious mechanic, who will, perhaps, accomplish all that is wished for. The great advantage would not be so much in lowering the cost to three shillings an acre, as the great advantage of quickness in cultivation, in utilising the laud, crop after crop, and be a means of producing thousands of fat sheep, and, in a short time, make the land capable of producing good corn crops. I have several other questions on which to ask assistance in the interests of farmers, but my letter having become so long, I must leave them for another week.

I see the correspondent of the Southland Netvs says a new digger, by Eeid and Gray, has just been tried, and proved such a success that he prophesies in a few years nothing else will be used, and double and treble-furrow ploughs will be used only to fill up gaps, with old reapers. We need not doubt the inventive genius in Canterbury after Eeid and Gray’s machines, Andrews and Bevan’s chaff-cutters, Stalker’s combine feeder, Kelt’s gorseentter, machines going away from Booth and M'Donald’s by hundreds, and even our ploughs, to Mr Macpherson (late of Canterbury) to England.