20 OCTOBER 1928, Page 17

100,000 ACRE Runts.

Paper will probably be soon used in England for such purposes. The other new American experiment recently endorsed whole-heartedly by the founder of the Brookings Institute in Washington, is of a scale probably too big for a little island. He prophesies the coming of an agricultural corporation run exactly on the lines of the Steel Corporation ; and founds his argument on the astonishing success of a Scottish-American engineer in Montana and of that other famous engineer, Mr. Henry Ford. The Scotehman, of the clan of Campbell, grows wheat on factory lines on a farm of 100,000 acres, gets a very fair yield (though nothing like that of English farmers) pays industrial wages and makes good profit. In old Hungary much more intensive units nearly as big in scale were known. One particular farm was equipped with its own railway and its own factories. All three examples illustrate a fact that has struck me again and again in many parts of the world (especially Australia and England) that the most successful farmers have been the engineers. Even a knowledge of botany and biology are less useful than engineering ingenuity. The " Deus " that solves the farming problem comes ex machina.

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