MECHANISED FARMING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 78, Issue 7018, 11 February 1949, Page 5

MECHANISED FARMING

LARGE INCREASE IN EQUIPMENT HORSES REPLACED A marked increase in mechanised farming has been made evident over the last few years due largely to the machinery coming within the price range of the average farmer and the greater prosperity of agriculture in general. Originally the farmer bought a tractor to replace his horse for drawing ploughs, discs, harrows and other miscellaneous farm equipment. Today, with the greater advances in engineering, and increased factory production, he can buy completely mechanised units, such as hydraulic ploughs, attached mowers, and many other varied and equally useful appliances for use on and around his farm. With a great shortage of farm labour the average farmer finds that he can cope with a larger amount of work in a far shorter time, and far more economically with less expenditure of labour on his own part than he did under the old system of horse and plough, and other allied methods of tilling, sowing and reaping.

To-day also, farmers are tending to buy quality, on the strength that if he buys a cheaper product he may be entangled in a sudden slump, which many of them envisage as a possibility, and so therefore be left with machinery that requires a far greater upkeep than it warrants.

With the large influx of’ British agricultural machines to the farms, farmers are finding that tfley rank every bit as well, if not better than, their American counterparts, and in many cases perform the same amount of work far more economically. This speaks worlds for the British craftsmanship and endeavour.