FARMING OR MINING?

Otago Witness, Issue 3292, 18 April 1917, Page 8

FARMING OR MINING?

In every new country virgin lands seem to receive very similar treatment by the early pioneer-farmer. Influenced, perhaps, by the gold-digger's methods —indeed, he probably had tried his luck at mining—lie worked the land until it could yield no more produce which would command a ready sale in the limited markets then accessible; and, possibly, like the Arkansas farmer, who, when remonstrated with, justified his methods: "You can't lam me nothing. Why, I've worn out three farms already !" This man was a tenant farmer who raised grain, and had to move on from one farm to another after a very short tenure. Certainly, in the early times, when settlement was with difficulty making headway, there was not to-day's demand for wool and meat, and the settler with well-placed and handy farming lands naturally enough made giain-growiug his main branch of farming'; but the result was inevitable: The continual growing of cereals, without providing a fertiliser of any sort, resulted in a kind of soil-mining, inasmuch that it removed valuable mineral phosphates, nitrates, and potash. Hill country was cheap, and easily carried all the stock available; but it was different with farming lands. With very little trouble good cereal crops were raised, .and could be sold with profit at a price per bushel which to-day would be deemed miserably small; or, at least, there was the prospect of bigger returns than from wool and meat. Land was cheap and fertile, cultivation cost but a third of Avhat it does to-day, and the cereal yields at first were abundant, while the land was being "broken up" or "broken down." To-day it takes a man with some special knowledge to grow grain on those same "mined'' lands. "Wheat after wheat" soon depleted the soil of plant food and lessened fertility, and instead of obtaining greater crops each year, the time came - when more skilful methods in agriculture were required. Farming with some scientific knowledge is necessary nowadays to successfully work a "wornout" farm, and yet we hear it asserted sometimes that there is nothing in agriculture to be learned—from science. Some few facts in favour of the spread of agricultural knowledge are cited by the Quebec Journal as follows: "Smut disease was very prevalent last season in oatfields where untreated seed was sown, but is quite scarce in fields where treated seed was planted. The loss would amount to 15 to 20 per cent, of the crop. Who devised the method of treatment? The scientific main Who devised methods of spraying fruit trees and potatoes against insect or fungus disease? Again the scientific man. Who gave us the information regarding the importance of clover and other leguminous crops in maintaining the supply of nitrogen in the soil, and who furnished the information Ave now possess regarding fertilisers? Again the scientific man. Who worked out practical systems of ventilation in barns and houses, and who made the wonderful improvements in farm machinery? Again the scientific man. Who gave us the Babcock test? A scientific man. Who has given the improved breeds of cattle, the improved strains of grain? The scientific man." The list might be continued, as, in point of fact, there is no single department of agriculture which has not benefited largely by science. Present-day farming, at its best, is the application of scientific methods to agriculture, and the important lesson to be drawn from the above seems to lie in the fact that the average farmer can become a scientific farmer by intelligent reading of the best agricultural papers and bulletins. "The art of farming we learn with our hands; the science of agriculture we must learn from the investigations of men of science."