31 JANUARY 1931, Page 17

Country Life

ANOTHER " DE1JS EX MAOITINA.

What may be called the Oxford Campaign for the Mechanized Farm advances apace in regard to propaganda. The Ministry gave a special grant for enquiry and research into " farming achievements representing departures from accepted local practice " ; and the zeal of some of the research workers has made them converts to a new sort of farming, round which a hot dispute has arisen. The fifth of the inves- tigated " departures " has now appeared, and goes to confirm Mr. Orwin, Director of the Oxford Agricultural Economics Research Institute in his heresy, if heresy it is. The departure in question is Mr. Hosier's, who some years ago leapt into fame as the inventor of an open-air dairy system, and of the simple apparatus that it required. He is called in the pamphlet " a pioneer of progress in farm management"; and the conclusion that Mr. Orwin seems to draw is this : " In the scale on which farming is conducted, particularly arable farming, in the application of machinery to intensify the value of human labour, in the extent to which the science of modern business manage- ment finds scope, rural industry might well be ripe for a new revolution." The italics are not Mr. Orwin's, but he clearly believes in the necessity of revolution by a Deus ex mach ins.

* * * *