Forests, Land and People
Sut,—Much of Mr. Ward's article in the Spectator of January 11th is sound sense. But he does not point out one very serious mistake in Forestry Commission policy. They buy up enormous: tracts of hill-land and plant the whole of it, good and bad, with trees, making vast blocks of woodland.
I have the luck to farm on marginal land between. 750 feet and 1,000 feet, on which the owners past and present have pursued an en- lightened forestry policy. Instead of planting great blocks of woodland, they have picked out the poorer_ parts of the estate, the steep banks - of the streams and the steeper slopes generally. The woodland thus planted covers about the same acreage as the land which they have left; and which I now farm as tenant. The woods are in large enough units to be workable, and indeed are much more accessible than the enormous Forestry Commission tracts. I am left with a farm which is scattered between the woodlands, but beautifully sheltered, and occupying all the best of this hill-land (it adjoins Blanchland moor). The result has been that the sheltered farmland can produce the output of a good lowland farm. As an instance of this, corn yields over the last three years have averaged. 29 cwt. per acre with a- top-yield'%if over two tons (wheat) per acre.: This would have been impossible at this height without the shelter the woods provide. Agricultural out- put is nationally even more important than forestry output. If the Forestry Commission and agricultural interests would only get together the output of both could be enormously increased.—Yours faithfully, B. C R. NICHOLL.
Colpit's Farm, Maley, flexhain, Northumberland.
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