A DEMONSTRATOR OF SCIENTIFIC DAIRY FARMING.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9269, 19 December 1891, Page 1 (Supplement)

A DEMONSTRATOR OF SCIENTIFIC DAIRY FARMING.

The following- critiqne recently appeared in the North British Agriculturist. — It is at any time an easy matter for a glibe writer, however shallow he may be, to propound theories for making any branch of farming profitable ; but it is a very different th'ng to work out these theories in successful practice. A very significant proof of this fact has just been announced from the south. For a good many years prior to the autumn of 1888, Mr James Long had been bestriding the dairy work like a veritable Colossua, and many of the south country papers were flooded with articles from his pen, affirming that, if farmers would only learn scientificmethods of making butter, they could make butter quite as good as that imported from Denmark, and transform an ' unprofitable industry into a highly profitable one." One result of this desiderated improvement in the quality of home-made bulter was that the £12,000,000 presently paid every year to foreign countries for dairy produce, would be turned.. into the pockets of Biitish farmers. In addition' to his multitudinous articles in the daily and weekly, journals, Mr_ Long had written a book on " British Dairy Farming," showing how to make this high-class dairy produce, which was going to induce the British public to buy home-made butter and cheese jn |>re-. ference So the produce of the foreigner. He was also Professor of Dairying at the Royal College of Cirenc'ester, and that position enabled him to deliver ex cathedra lectures denouncing our home farmers for their want of attention to the scientific instructors "who were ready to show them" how to manage their business. But a crisis arrived in the autumn of 1888, which wrought an immense to Mr Long. At the meeting of the' Brijish Association at Bath in that year, a paper from his pen j was nominally " re d," in 1 which tho writer ; roundly declared that farmers had their own ignorance to thank for their ,want of success; and that, if they would only adopt scientific methods of intensive fanning, they would produce " fifty times the amonnt" they were presently producing. .This journal at once pointed out the absurdity and fallacy of these contentions, and in the blizzard of criticism which followed, Mr Long resigned the Professorship cf Dairying at Cirencester. Shortly afterwards he retired to a laigo farm in Hampshire, "there to practice the principles he had so zealously advocated, and demonstrate to the world how to make British dairy farming a profitable pursuit. In hia retirement he wrote 1 "The Book of the Pig," showing how the breeding and feeding of improved varieties of pigs might be made a profitable branch of farming if scientifically gone about. ' 'Ntfw, however, -it is announced in the N.oxwich Argus that Mr Long is abandoning dairy farming, as he finds he Canfiot compete with the Danish I producers of butter. Our Norwich contem-r porary of the hundred eyes also announces that the author of " The Book of the Pig" ! is finding the scientific breeding of improved varieties of pigs an exceedingly I unprofitable business, aa ho has 100 pedigreed animals on his hands, and cannot find purchasers for them at a remunerative ! price. This is rather singular, considering that the best class of well bred pigs are in good demand at the present time. Anyway, Mr Long is now abandoning both dairying and pig breeding, and is going in for sheep breeding, which is the staple industry of the district in which his farm is located. It [ is instructive^ note tbat the number of farmers who -are going in for dairying ia [ increasing every year, and they must be finding dairying fairly profitable before this would be" the case ; while the gentlej man who elated them so severely for their ignorance of scientific methods has found his own scientific methods unprofitable in . piactice. Mr Long's non-success aa a practical demonstrator of scientific dairying is greatly to be 1 regretted;. Undoubtedly a I great deaj. of the dairy produce of this I country is' sold at a low price on account of its inferior character, and there is much 1 need for dairy education throughout tho country. But it is a great mistake to denounce British farmers as a body for being unqualified to manage their business ; and the non-success of so many college trained students, when they blossom out into farmers, ia apt to make practical farmers harbour a feeling of distrust against technical instruction in agriculture.- '"