SHELL-TORN LANDS

Otago Witness, Issue 3314, 19 September 1917, Page 26

SHELL-TORN LANDS

FRANCE'S FARMING PROBLEM

EFFORTS AT RESTORATION

For tho ruined gardens and nurseries of the French territory which has_ been evacuated by tho German armies, it has been announced that France will do the rebuilding, the United Slates will do the furnishing, and England will supply implements and seeds, wrote a Paris correspondent of the New York Times. Before all this—evon for the present summer wherever it may be possible—it is urgent that the wasted farm land should bo got into condition and begin producing. There has never been a. more thrifty and laborious farming people than the French—and all of them who are left available are only too anxious to get to Work. But there are no villages and no houses left where their land is, and the soil is in a state which no farmer ever saw before. Americans have been planning—very practically—how to rebuild quickly all these homes, but it will take time. How can all the wasted land be brought under cultivation at once—this summer and the coming autumn? This is a question which ought to interest many Americans, for they may be able to give immediate help. And their help will enable French farmers to get to work and produce food for themselvea a year sooner than might be possible otherwise. Henri Hitier, wlfb is a member of the Superior Council of Agriculture of Franco, is just back from a thorough investigation of the state of the land. This is a short summary of his answer to the question. Take the department of the Scmme, which has been fought oyer in every direction and where there are now immense tracts of farming land freed from the invader. Before the war, every foot of this land bore a crop of wheat or fodder or sugar beets—with choice cattle raising. No land in France was more fertile.

To-day, the land is that is about all you can say of it. Whore there were flourishing villages, there is often not a vestige of them left —not a human habitation, not a farm or farming material, not a trace of cultivation. Oh, yes! there is the land —but what is it like?

M. Hitier divides it roughly into three regions or zones, as war has left it. The battle zone was freed in the last few months—and it is desperate chaos. Everywhere, like wide, deep funnels, are the excavations made by the b'£ shells of heavy cannon. Between these there are the holes d.ug by thousands of ordinary shells as they fell and exploded—or, perhaps, did not explode, for that, too, has to be taken into account when farming begins again. And covering all the soil is the scrap iron and metal hail and dust covering up the good soil from torrents of shrapnel and bullets fired in battle.

What are you going to do with such land? Nothing—until engineers can go over it with tractor ploughs and sifters and levellers the like of which have perhaps not yet been invented. The second or intermediate zone is that of the evacuation and retreat, which was fought over here and there,' but not so universally nor for so long a time. Here there is more solid soil between the shell holes; and where there are big funnel holes, grass is already growing as in little valleys. There, says M. Hitier, you can pasturo sheep. Farther still to the rear there is the third zone —and the most interesting for immediate cultivation. Here the soil is not so revolutionised, with only now and then remains of old trenches and barbed-wire barriers, which can easily bo done away with. Of this third zone there are thousands and thousands of acres stretching away like our prairies, now that the human habitations which once filled them are gone. It is a vast prairie—and here, says M. Hitier, something can and must be done. Now, what cannot be done —at least, not for the present year—is to rebuild villages and houses and jjjjugar mills. But the ground can bo cultivated now. First, tho peasants and farm-hands must have some sort of shelter put up for them. Tents would do, if nothing else can bo had Second, farm tools and all the agricultural, implements which the ruthless invader either carried off or destroyed before retreating must be replaced. For these poor farmers, such tools and implements represent a working capital of 150 dollars an acre of his wasted land. And then ho must have ploughing cattle —horses or oxen or cows, for these, too, aro profiting by the inevitable women's rights movement. The French Government is already at work trying to help tho inhabitants of this region to go back to their land, which is all that is left them now. But right away, concludes M. Hitier, hay may be cut on thousands of acres—and there are thousands of acres for the pasturing of sheep and cattie. And there aro other thousands of acres at which, work should be begun—so that they may be sown in autumn, or, at least, in the spring, for next year's crops. As soon as the German armies began retreating, nearly three yeais ago, after the battle °of tho Marne, English Quakers set to work in France to build temporary homes for those who had been made homeless. Their work has become endless. _lt is said that American Quakers are coming over to help. Perhaps American farmers, whoso machines in the past have dealt with larger prairies—though with none harder to handle—may find a way to lend a helping hand. Tho land that for a thousand years pave food to this people is here, but its cultivation has to be begun all over again. The people who cultivated it like a garden are here, capable and anxious to clear and cultivate again. But there is no house, nor plough, nor seed, nor cattle to draw the plough! That is the question.