BRITISH FARMING.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13989, 26 August 1909, Page 7

BRITISH FARMING.

TOO SLOW. In a communication to the "Now Zealand Times," Dr W. A. Chappie, who is now in England, says:— Notwithstanding all the up-to-date machinery at the Royal Show, the magnificent demonstrations of intensive cultivation in the French garden and other plots, and the wonderful show of pedigree animals; notwithstanding the lessons that are so self-evident from these exhibitions that the best pays best, that quality' always tells, that machine cogs are better than fingers, that bad breeds eat as much, if not more, than good breeds; notwithstanding all this, the average English farmer lags behind. Things that were good enough anil fast enough for his great-grandfather are good enough for him. He still uses old-fashioned implements in the oldfashioned way, at the old-fashioned pace. 1 watched a farm hand harrowing the other day. He was leading one horse in a two-leaf harrow. 1 had to wait a quarter of an hour before I could get him to walk from one end of the field to the other without stopping, in order that I might time his pace. At last lie performed this feat, and by timing him with my stopwatch and measuring the distance, I discovered that when working his horse was walking at the rato of one and a third miles per hour. Fairly slow walking witli a team is three miles an hour, fast walking four miles an hour. " .Decline in agriculture," as they call it in this country, is attributed to foreign c-ompeptition, and agriculture lies back and waits for tariff reform or some such penacea. Beef producers in this country get from £l4 to for a fat bullock that fetches £" or £8 in New Zealand. They get 36s for a lamb that fetches 12s in our conn-

try. They yet from 24s to 30s for a wether tliat fetches los with us, anil when it comes to pedigree stock they get big prices for indifferent. animals, and anything they like to ask for the best. The average British farmer is pitiably slow in the " uptak. - ' If he could bring himself to use. the. scientific knowledge that is everywhere ready it iiis hand, and adapt himself to modern requirements, there would be an foreign competition ,and agricu lturc this country, but the farmer and the farm hand are still in the rut.

Four farm hands stood at the heads of a four-horse Clydesdale waggon in a recent show at Brighton. The animals were magnificent, and were being exhibited in a horse parade. I asked the first man the value of the horse he held, but lie did not know. I asked him what lie would give, or have to give, for a lior.se like that in the market. I asked him the age- of the horse. He knew none of these things. I asked the second man and the third, and finally the fourth. The replies .of the fourth were illumiating. He was taxed by his fellow driver, and accused of knowing absolutely nothing about it. He refuted this soft impeachment by declaring that he knew what the master gave for him, and explained that he had been having a glass of beer in an inn the other day when the master caught him coming out and accused him of riskjng a £6O horse for a pint of beer by leaving it unattended. A New Zeulander would have known the value of each of these horses, the price a buyer would have to pay, the age and the pedigree. Neither the average English farmer nor the farm hand is keeping pace.