Where Fanning Began.

Wairarapa Age, 23 March 1929, Page 3

Where Fanning Began.

ANTIQUITY OF LUCERNE. Farm’* ng began in Rome, says the * 4 Prairie Farmer.” The Assyrians and the Egyptians had merely learned to scratch the soil. Whatever success they had was due to kindly Nature and a fertile soil rather than to intelligent farming. The futility of the Valley of the NiU was lacking in Rome The Romans had to farm better tan the Egyptians or (Starve. They chose to learn to farm. The Babylonians let a worn-out field lie idle for a year The Romans summer-fallowed it. The Egyptians grew legumes for food and hay. The Romans grew them in rotation to improve the soil. They learned to test soil for sourness and to improve it with marl in the provinces where 1 that material was available. They selected their seed carefully and grew alfalfa. In the words of Cato: “It is from the tillers of the soil that spring the best citizens, the stanchest soldiers; and theirs are the enduring rewards which are most grateful and least envied.’* Not having a naturally fertile soil the Roman fanner had to maintain its productiveness with care. “What is the first principle of good agriculture?’ asks Cato. “To plough well. What is the second? To plough again; Hie third is to manure.” And he adds that “It is the lazy farmer who lacks manure.

“It is much more desirable for the farmer to feed his forage on the land than to sell it,” says Varro, “and a herd of cattle is the best source of supply of that which is the most available food for growing plants— manure.”

But Varro realised that there must be gain as well as live stock farmers, and to the former he gives this advice on green manuring:— “ Certain plants are cultivated not so much for their immediate yield as with forethought for the coming year, because cut and left lying they improve the land. »So if land: it too thin it is the practice to plough in for manure, lupines not yet podded, and like-" wise the field bean if it has not yet ripened so that it is fitting to harvest the beans.”

“Of all the legumes alfalfa is the best,” says Columella, “because when once it is sown it lasts ten years; because it can be mowed four times, or even six times, a year; because it improves the soil; because all lean cattle grow fat by feeding upon it; because it is a remedy for sick beast; because a jugerum _(two-thirds of an acre) of it wil- feed three horses plentifully for a year.”

Few of our present-day authorities would put. the ease so correctly or convincingly.