THE FARMER OF THE FUTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 February 1917, Page 6

THE FARMER OF THE FUTURE.

HOW SCIENCE CAN HELP, (By William Bruce, B.Sc., F.H.A.S, Senior Lecturer ii: Agriculture, Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture, in The Dairy). One Seed not look very far into the past to find ample proof of how sciencehas; helped His farmer. Anyone who has watched the development of the use of artificial fertilisers cannot hut he immensely impressed by the far-reach-ing influence of the discoveries of science ■n this\sphere alone. It has enormously cheapened production; and if the farmer is unwilling to admit that lie is any bettei off on this account, he may be rei"im!td that good authorities maintain that but for the use of artificial man'•ics a great part of the arable land of Britain could not bo maintained in cultivation under the economic conditions of to-day. B'lt, great as has been the effect of (he discovery of fertilisers, il, is probably true that a large proportion ol farmers derived 110 direct benefit owing to their inability to make the mos; profitable use of them. The amount of money that was wasted in building up the practice of their use by empiricism or in contempt of scientific investigation, should stir every young farmer, to the study of science. It is"pathetic to hear many a veteran farmer of to-day noinit that had ho known thirty years age what he had laboriously acquired ir: that time, it would have been worth hundreds of pounds to him. But it is a truth well worth layiug to heart that the ordinary tiller of the soil has still much to learn in this section of his colling", and could have a rich retii'.n frcm wcll-dincted efforts to acquire a knowledge of the scientific principles of manuring.

AN EXORIIOUS CHANCiB. Again, one has cnly to think of the enoimous change in the practice of stoek-kccping 1o be equally impressed villi the rapid development in this dopertinent of afriuing since scientific invistigation began ti shed even dim light 01: some of iU problems. For centuries farmers fed stock empirically on wh?t their fields produced, and. as a r;iie. inside little effort to keep up the supply of fresh moat; for the surplus stock was killed oil' annually at the end of tiie period of plinty. But now no one thiflks of fattening stock without drawing heavily on conconrnted foods, whi:h have all been (!isco\ered and selected by the aid of science. It has been demonstrated heyon 1 question that the methods of a generation ago would be impossible to-dnv. A!) stock fanners r..w foci compelled to t'se purchased feeling stuffs, and some of the most successful employ them so liberally that the bill on this account, is frequently greater than the rent of the farm. While undi-i' the influence of science this transition from ancient, customary methods !o modern practice has taken place in a generation, still there,can be lit (If doubt that even the- most advanced so fa' know littk more than the elements of the subject, and further, investigation is certain to he followed by far-reachiiiL' rtsults. Practical men will most surely ado to their profits by keeping m c10.>3 touch with what is goiny on in this line,. A? an illustration it may be mentioned that- feeding experiments carried out on a large scale by the Edinburgh and Ei-st of Scotland College of Agriculture slow that in the consumption of ths pmlucts of the farm the differences resi.lting from farm methods of feeding that are considered good practice in thesame district may amount to more than the rent.

XIIE DAIRY INDUSTRY, Let us next turn to dairy farming This lias grown in. recent years to a great industry- So far it lias depended more on hard work and erndc ma-:-t-ce llian on scientific methods, and today it is threatened because the workers are rebelling against the drudgery involved in ordirary dairy practice Many hardly realise what this industry hr<- "done for farming. In many la: ds ifc has worked wonders in resuscitating agriculture. It was the salavtion 'jtthe Danish farmers when crushed and almost ruined by the disastrous win which terminated in ISO 4. A few years later, when the agricultural crisis overtook British fanning, and large graingrowing holdings became untenable, it v/as dairy fnrminj. that saved thousands fiom ruin, and laid the foundations of the fortunes of many of the most well-to-do farmers of the present generation. Probably no more out-standing instance of what this branch of farming did for British agriculture can he cited than the reclamation of Essex. In this case a large tract of corn-growing land, within an hour's .journey of the centre of London, was rapidly becoming derelict when it was saved by the migration of a few Scottish farmers with a practical knowledge of cows and hard work. They showed the w.iy to the new farming ami to-day train loads of milk are sent daily to the centres of population, then; are no derelict farms, rent-rolls have undergone a 1 large increase, and anyone visiting the country now is impressed with the farming and general appearance of prosperity Is all this to pass ov.ay owing to llic rebellion of tlie workers? Can the application of science not relieve the situation? FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS. " A suggestive feature is that, has been the development of the dairy industry, it has no more than kept pace with the increased demand for milk Hie question naturally arises whether ithas reached its full growth. A study o; the per capita consumption of milk in large towns, and comparison of the figures with similar ones for country districts, indicates that such an idea need not be entertained. We maj> thc-rcforc say: encourage the consumer by means of a more wholesome milk supply, and there is little doubt hut this valuable article call find a much greater place in tl.e food of the people. This being the prospect we may well ask whether an industry which has done so much in its infancy for farming 1= t.i be strangled because the workers ask for better conditions of labor. Have those, responsible for the direction of this industry looked as assiduously for assistance from science as they hav-. for servants to work long hours amid disagreeable conditions? I'erlmps the Vest answer to this question may be got by taking a wide survey. In the procrK-u rrf civilisation :t is a well-known maxim that adversity makes for progress. For inspiration we may look to countries that have been harder pressed than ourselves. For this purpose we may again refer to Denmark That country, cwir.g to stress of circumstances, look I<. dairying nearly twenty years ear.'.''' than we did, and for the same reason it appears to have kept as much in the led ill its deyeloprcpnt Ten v years ago

record that they had traeod the history and seen the fruits of a movement by which the farmers of Denmark," starling y.itl; inferior native cattle, had produced in a quarter of a century, bv careful •si-lection and breeding, eows or almost oneijualled capacity for milk pr.-uuHlun. This is a line hardly touched so far by the British farmer, and it is full cf possibilities for hm. It is intensive work involving a certain amount of risk that can be overcome only by application ol' scientilie method to the practical v-ork of farming. But jjliat the fruits aje undoubtedly there for those who deserve them is a fact that lias been abundantly demonstrated iu recent years by a few enterprising farmers in our own count! y. SCIENTIFIC FEEDING FOR MILK. While the keeping of milk records ef breeding milking cows is an important step towards making the dairy farm a more productive ui.it, another that goes l.and in hand with it is the adoption jf systcmatised feeding of the cows. 111 this line the Dane? have also made remarkable progress Tfley set aside tiie idea, still held by dairymen in this country —namely, that high milk yield is a. function of feeding. They have accepted the seiontilie dictum that the deep-milking cow k born, not made by feeding, and they regu'iatc the food aeording to the capacity of the individual to produce milk. To simplify this tiicy have adonted a method of reckoning the various foods in standards or qiwitit '.es that arc more r.r less interchangeable. So many standards are allowed for the proper maintenance of the cow's body, and to thar one standard is auded for each 31b of milk produced by the cow. Shrinkage in the yield is followed by a corresponding reduction in the ration. Thus every cow gets sullbient food to sustain her natural milk yield at its highest level, but when this in the course of nature falls off there is no waste of food. The Americans at sevcial of the experiment their agricultural colleges are following the Danish practice in principle with excellent results. There is, indeed, every reason for believing that this system jot feeding dairy eattle is highly commendable, being scientific, economical, and profitable. What its adoption woulil dc for the farmers of this country may b? gathered from the results of investigation into the folding of di}';ry oattlion a large number of farms in England This work is being carried 011 in counties in the vicinity of Wye and Beading by the stall's of'the local agricultural colleges. it lias already shown that t lie eo;t of food per gallon of milk pro. tineed on these fauns varies enormou.i ly, and may easily be double in some eases what it is iu others. Similar ;iivestigations lisclo;;'. a like state of affairs both in Yorkshire and in Scothind. Surely ihe vine has arrived when si:cli findings should be 110 matter of indifference to the rank and file of milk producers. We have said enough to make it clear that there is room for gieai improvement in British divry tanning, and to indicate how this .na., be accomplished. Those who will brine Kicr.cc and organising capacity to bear on the practice ol dairying may be asj tyred of ample rcv.ard.

MAJO'G WORK MORE AGREEABLE So far only outstanding instances oi hrw science can help the farmer have been cited, but there are many mori-. Indeed, they arc almost innumerable By no means the least are those cor.' nected with the economy of labor an;! the betterment- of the conditions of ths workers. We hav>: already alluded to the labor difficulty in dairy farming, The question may be asked: Has everything practicable been done to miko the work easier and more agreeable' Anyone who lias travelled through Ihc di'iries of the world will rcadilv answer, "No—not by an means." Much of (he dirty, disagreeable work of the dairy can be made lighter and more plca?an' by cow-sheds, .-.ml such as scarcity of labor has induced farmers in ill? New World to accept o-. a blessing We may refer specifically to the overhead mono-rail and the suspended waggon which so much facilitate! the feeding and cleaning of cows ill many sheds on the other side of tlie Av lantic. But it is not necessary to go so far for examples of improvement One finds here and there a man of ingenuity who scrap-; his antiquated boilers replaces them by a steam generator, and at a stroke sweeps aside a iarge amount of disagreeable work. Incident' ally, in a short time lie often save? as much on fuel as meets the cost, md tl on wonders why he tarried so long be fere adopting the improvement. Imira'!, the possibilities of science as the hindmaid of agriculture are great and farreaching. The only limit is the perception of man. Fanners of the past Uav3 been wont to depend on the praelir-J a farming rather than on the scientific aspect- of it. Let it now tie recognised that the successful farming of the future will depend as much on the cultivation of the brain as 011 the cultivation of the field.