SPECIALISATION IN FARMING

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 3, 3 December 1931, Page 8

SPECIALISATION IN FARMING

ECONOMIST’S ADVICE

The Agricultural correspondent of the London Times writes:

In these bewildering days farmers are ready to listen to practical advice from any quarter. Their best endeavours are defeated by the markets. Every one recognises this, but confidence is also shaken in the established practices of farming which served former genegatlons so admirably and made this country the leading example of good husbandry from which other nations took their pattern. Farming is not an industry in which radical changes and innovations can be introduced in a day or a year, but the desperate plight of so many hardworking farmers at the present time is forcing the pace. The economy of rural England is changing now probably more rapidly than at any other time in the history of the industry. It is not only a matter of arable land being laid down to grass and the dismissal of labourers. The present movement is more fundamental.

Competition to win a bare living from farming is so keen that all are seeking to concentrate their full energies of production on those lines that appear to offer tho best chances of profit. The rapid development of dairying in the past decade is one case in point. To-day every other farmer in the country seems to have milk to sell. Indeed, the quantity produced is an embarrassment in the negotiations over contract prices which are now taking place. CONCENTRATED PRODUCTION. The established balance of the industry has been upset and many farmers are wondering where the new excursions will lead them! But there are those who see advantages in the break-up of the system of mixed farming. Mr C. S. Orwin, the Director of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute at Oxford, is one of these. In an address Mr Orwin has urged farmers to consider, each one for himself in the light of his own circumstances, the possibility of reducing costs by specialised production, that is by concentrating on the production in the cheapest possible way of each commodity considered entirely by itself. He decries mixed farming typified by the sheep fold on arable ground and believes that successful farming is moving more and more away from diversity of production in the direction of specialisation. To support this contention Mr Orwin has quoted tlie enterprises of Mr George Bavlis, the corn-growing specialist in Berkshire, and Mr Arthur Hosier, who has converted the Wiltshire Downs into a milk walk. Both achievements are impressive for successful concentration on one line of production. MAINTAINING FERTILITY. At the root of the system of mixed farming in this country is the belief that livestock, through the agency of the sheep-fold and the dung-cart, will best maintain the fertility of the arable ground for cropping. Usefully Mr Orwin has directed attention to the expense of this method in these days when labour costs bulk largely in outgoings. In his address he mentioned figures for four farms following mixed farming practice to show how much of the total horse labour was employed in carting things backwards and* forwards on the farm. The percentage varies lrom 28 to 40. This is exclusive of labour employed upon ■cultivation, hay-making, harvesting, delivery to and from tlie station ana market, and so on. In the best case more than one quarter, in the worst case nearly one half, of the time of the horsemen and their teams was spent in pulling things around the farm, it is not only a question of manure, but there is also all the labour involved in carting crops to stock. Taking the farm which Mr Orwin classes as the best of the four, the horse labour on the manure carts and the men employed with them accounted for 6 per cent, of the total horse labour • employed on all farm operations of every kind, or one day in 16. Taking the worst farm, the manure cart accounted for 12 per cent, of this total horse labour, or one day in eight. Mr Orwin suggests that crop production can be organised more economically on a new foundation bv relying more upon the products of the chemical manure factory and less upon the farmyard and the sheep-fold, and also that livestock products can be turned out more cheaply if separtaed from their part in corn growing.

MIXED FARMING PRACTICE. The problem which Mr Orwin lias reviewed cannot be solved in general terms. No generalisation holds good for all conditions. Unquestionably there are circumstances in which it pays the individual farmer to specialise, for instance, in potato growing in the Fens or breeding 6tore sheep in the Border country, but there are also circumstances in which mixed farming proves its economy. To the outside observer farmers may seem to be unduly conservative in the policies they pursue and too cautious in breaking away from local customs. Actually the tradition of mixed farming is founded on tbe experience of generations, and its principles are sound enough. Call it arable stock farming and immediately it has the blessing of some mentors, because this is the practice that .Denmark has adopted. There are many good farmers in Scotland, and the practice typical of some of the best farmed districts in the Lowlands incorporates stock farming on long-term leys in the arable rotation. In this way the fertility of the farm is maintained at a hieh pitch and the incidence of animal disease is "minimised by the regular ploughing up of pastures and frequent changes of grazing ground. The disease point is important. Heavy stocking with one class of stock is apt to lead to trouble. Certainly the management of a mixed farm is more complicated and calls for wider knowledge than the specialised farm. With one practice dovetailing into another it is not easy to make clean-cut economies. Energies are apt to be diffused. Nevertheless, there are shrewd farmers who still contrive to make a success of the business on these lines, balancing the items and taking one vear with another. Really more depends on the man himself, his business capacity, and his land, than on the type of farming he practises.