Mature Crops Indoors Grown Without Soil in 10 Days

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19130, 26 September 1936, Page 13

Mature Crops Indoors Grown Without Soil in 10 Days

A REVOLUTION in farming practice is expected by the discovery of a method of producing cattle fodder indoors without soil in 10 days. .This is the result of 4 1 years' research by two Englishmen, Messrs. A. Hastings-Thomas and V. O. Dashwood, who have opened 20 centres throughout England uncle* the supervision of county council agricultural experts in order to demonstrate the simplicity of the new method of plant culture to farmers!

'Die Ministry of Agriculture is watching the experiments with great interest.

The inventors claim that under their scheme, which they call "cabinet culture": —■

One acre of floor space is equal to 17G0 acres of grass land. Sixpcnnyworth of seed will grow 200 cwt. of green fodder.

One crop of fodder can be produced per day instead of one per vear.

A fanner feeding intensively cultivated maize instead of hay and grass to his livestock will save 10s on every pig brought, to bacon weight, £1 on every bullock, and from .15 to 20 per cent, on milk production.

All animals will be in better condition because they will be eating young, fresh food instead of old or dried grass which has been weakened. of its vitamin;".

At the King's Cross demonstration centre a ton of maiae a day will be produced in a large galvanised iron cabinet. There Is No Soil.

The inside of the cabinet contains rows of trays. Each tray contains maize in a different stage of growth.

To-day's tray holds seed. Yesterday's shows the white shoots. The shoots are larger and larger up to the tenth day, when the fodder is full grown and ready to be taken .out and eaten.

There is no soil. On top of the cabinet is a tank full of water, containing a small proportion of a chemical solution. The chemicals are those of which soil consists.

Solution to last an average farmer for a month costs .15s.

'ln the bottom of the tank are small ho.'cs.

For three minutes every twentyfour hours a tap is turned on and the tank drops "rain" on to the top lavcr of trays.

j By the tenth day the growth can be lifted out of the tray like a grassgrown mat. The animal eats every scrap oi' it, and the tray is perfectly clean. There is no dirt of any kind in the whole process.

Easy To Look After. "Now that, it is complete if is perfectly simple," IMr. Dashwood said recently. "Cabinets can be fixed in any building, on the floor or around the walls, and are easy to look after. "Animals fed on those intensive crops—it need not be maize, it can be any green fodder—do not need to go into fields.

"They can be kept indoors and in yards. Owing to the high digestibility of this young grass they will not need so much cake or meal.

"The farmer who adopts it can turn his fields over from grass to cereals and roofs.

"Ho will still need to keep some ground for fodder crops, however, for the sake of seed. "This intensive cultivation will not bring a plant, to the stage of the ear and the seed. The seed must be grown from soil.

"So far, v.e have concentrated on fodder. Hut we have tried salads and vegetables and they grow just, as easily.

"Then we want to take an old building somewhere and have the Ministry of Agriculture study the process.''

A. Ministry of Agriculture official said:—■

"These experiments, if they can be put on a commercial 'oasis, which seems to be' certain, will bring about a revolution in cattlc-fcodrng methods. "There is no doubt thai many agricultural experts believe that an epoch-making advance in crop-growing has been discovered.''