SCIENCE IN FARMING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19807, 30 November 1927, Page 14

SCIENCE IN FARMING.

THROUGH AMERICAN EYES. A WORLD-WIDE IMRETUS. UNITED STATES WOOL HUNGRY. Paramount among tlio impressions formed by Professor E. J. Iddings, Dean of Agriculture and Director of the Agricultural Experimental Station of tlio University of Idaho, United States, after a world tour, is the impetus which has been given agricultural research by all the leading nations. He arrived in Auckland by (he IJlimaroa from Sydney yesterday, the Dominion being his last, place of call before returning to America. In Great Britain, France, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Germany, the Channel Islands, Egypt, Italy, India, Ceylon, and Australia, Professor Iddings closely examined farming methods, particularly from the economic and educational standpoints. Speaking of the world-wide development of agricultural research, ho mentioned as instances the huge sums of money being spent in England and Scotland on the enlargement. of some experimental institutions. and the establishment of others. Cambridge University had recently added sections dealing with animal nutrition, pathology, and agronomic lines of study. Italy, under the Mussolini regime, was developing great schemes of agricultural research and there had been established 30 miles from Rome u 3000 acre farm for the purpose of animal production study. Wider Fields of Research.

So it was in Egypt, India and Australiu. " The fields for research are everywhere being broadened," said Professor Iddings, " The meaning is that agriculture to-day is more closely allied to scientific facts and the trend of economics, the application of which to farming is absolutely necessary for its proper development in the highest technical phases." The international interdependence of agricultural problems, the professor said, was one other thing which had engraved itself on his mind. In Egypt he was told of the hard times cotton growers there had suffered last year on account of the great surplus production in the United States. To-day the Egyptian cotton growers wore a smile borne of the expectation of sound values in prospect—the result of the disastrous flooding of the Mississippi River, which had ruined vast cotton crops in America. Australian pastoralists and agriculturalists had been sorely tried by the drought in the Commonwealth, which had lightened the wool clip and reduced the exportable surplus of wheat, but it would mean a better return to the farmers of western America engaging in like enterprises

Lessons from England. " Especially have I been delighted to visit the English-speaking countries," said Professor Iddings. " Great Britain is, of course, the homo of by far the largest number of improved breeds of farm animals and the source of much of the scientific knowledge applied to farming. It is pleasant as the final impression of a long tour to visit these new commonwealths, Australia and New Zealand, which are in so many ways comparable in people, production and methods, with tho Pacific Coast region of the United States." Questioned respecting America as a market for New Zealand butter, the professor said: "You will always be able to sell there, but the dairying industry of the United States has developed rapidly of recent years, more particularly on account of the depression in 1920. from which many farmers have not yet recovered. It had the effect of forcing them to engage in phases of intensive farming such as dairying and poultry raising, which had hitherto been neglected. But New Zealand as a seller will find there a rapidly increasing population, even if the American dairyman is trying hard to expand his operations to more nearly produce sufficient to approximate the home demand."

America's Meagre Flocks. Producing as it did less than half the wool which Australia grew, and only half as much again as Now Zealand, the United States was compelled to purchase 50 per cent, of its wool requirements from overseas, and he presumed New Zealand would now be benefiting by America's hunger for the finer wools. It was a fact, Professor Iddings stated, that the flocks of the United States were only 60 per cent, of what they totalled 50 years ago—this in the face of a rapidly growing population. The visitor leaves for Hamilton this morning to inspect the State experimental farm at Ruakura, and will later call at the Wereroa State Farm at Levin, and other places of farming interest throughout New Zealand.