STATESMAN’S PIGS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 299, 19 December 1933, Page 11

STATESMAN’S PIGS

LLOYD GEORGE AS FARMER WASTE LAND NOW FERTILE RECLAIMING A WILDERNESS. LONDON, Nov. 9. Mr. Lloyd George has a 500-acre estate at Churt, Surrey, which, for 10 years, he has been farming—producing, among other things, fruit, pigs and poultry. His earliest planted orchard has already come into profit, bearing on a commercial scale. Mr. P. W. D. Izzard, the agricultural correspondent of the Daily Mail, spent the day at Churt yesterday with Mr. Lloyd George. As a result he says that the farmer-politician ha» made his estate outstanding among the farmed lands of. England, and ho gives a very interesting account of the procedure which has been adopted. Mr. R. Hatton, Director of the East Mailing Research Station, Mr. J. H. Mattinson. agricultural organiser for Surrey, and Professor R. G. Stapledon, grass expert, University of Wales—who was once in New Zealand—joined - the party. Mr. Lloyd George pointed to a wide tract of rough ground on which pigs were routing. “There are my pioneers,” he said. “I have 500 pigs doing the first clearing of that land. That has been my method. Frst the pigs, and when they have routed out all they can, the tractor follows. Then comes the feeding of the land. You see for yourself what the soil is—sand, and nothing but sand. Take up a handful of it, and you can blow it away. The first crop on it is lupins, which are dug in to make humus, and this is done for several seasons. One or two crops of vegetables come next. Then there is the question of the right manures to use, and, following that the right trees to plant. I have had most valuable help from Mr. Hatton and Mr. Mattinson.” Professor Stapledon’s Help. Speaking to Mr. Izzard of land reclamation and restoration in this country, Mr. Lloyd George said that Professor Stapledon’s work in Cardiganshire, on the highlands of which county he has enabled three sheep to thrive where before one hardly could pick a living, had been an inspiration to him in his own reclamation, work in the Surrey highlands. “Stapledon also has given me valuable advice,” he said. “British producers do not take the advantage which one would expect of the knowledge obtained for them by our groat research workers. That is a point which should be brought home to them all.” Mr. Izzard was amused at the very thorough grubbing which Mr. Lloyd George’s pigs were giving his land. These porcine labourers were making holes in some places, which Mr. Lloyd George pointed out, “are as large as shell holes.” Working in scrub, they wore leaving standing nothing but au occasional oak sapling. They were a mixed crowd of white, black, spotted and blue, pigs, mainly hybrids, but they were not Mr. Lloyd George’s bacon pigs. He showed the latter herd in another plantation, doing the same work. His aim is to got a herd of 1000 pigs of the best bacon typo. On another part of the estate Mr. Izzard had a panoramic view of some 4000 head of poultry, of proven breeds and including a fine lot of geese. Hedges No Longer Needed. Then the party reached a high and dense hedge. “This,” the owner stated, “is coining down. It was necessary when the fruit trees were younger, but a screen is no more wanted. I have added six acres to cultivation by scrapping useless hedges, and here you see mon who were unemployed carrying on the task for me. It shows you what reclamation work can do to solve this problem. The estate formerly employed three men; now 21 are in regular work, and a great deal more labour is taken on for fruit-pick-ing and other seasonal jobs.” It is about his fruit, and the gradual bringing into planting condition of field after field, the, reader is told, that Mr. Lloyd George is most enthusiastic. Forty-six more acres of fruit trees are to be planted this season, which wili bring the orcharding up to morn than 100 acres. “There are reclamation and restoration,” Mr. Lloyd George said, “both of the highest value. Most of this land has been reclaimed from a state of absolute wilderness; the rest has been restored after lying derelict many years. It is typical of a vast amount of land in this country. Work for Unemployed. “The landlord is ‘broke.’ He can not find the money. I have been able to find it because 1 have other means of income. But money for this national need should be found’ by the State. Tn the long run it would be a far sounder proposition than paying the workless a weekly allowance and keoninu them idle. “The extra £1 or so per week per man which it might cost would have something of great worth to show in waste land made fertile. It would also preserve the morale of the men, and by keeping the country-bred people in the villages preserve that fine physique of the rural population, which is so valuable a national asset. Mussolini, the greatest statesman in the world to day, is doing it, and I believe Hitler is doing it.”