(To MU EDITOR or THE " 8Pecsrraa.".1 Sie, — In your excellent
article on the above in your issue of August 7th I am in -entire agreement with the policy advocated and so forcibly and clearly expressed, but, "in proof of what ordinary farm land will produce under the plough," a farm trading account for the year ending March 31st, 1920, is pub- lished, which I think entirely refers to 90 acres of ploughed up pasture-land, being part of the proprietors' park. As the figures in the trading account show a large net profit on the year's trading, I think there is some danger of these figures being read as " what ordinary farm land will produce under the plough " in circumstances quite different from what might have happened in this case. Assuming that 90 acres of old park land have been ploughed up,,there must be taken into account the stored up fertility in this park, which had prob- ably been grazed with cattle and sheep for generations. This
accumulation of capital is now being used up rapidly by grow- ing cereals, and in a certain number of years will cease to be available.
In most cases old park land ploughed up (provided wireworra and other pests are avoided) would show similar results for, at any rate, the first rotation under cereals, but the loss of grazing land might be great and impossible to replace even at the price of profits gained from the first rotation of cereals grown; but, even apart from that (and it is possible that such land is not intended ever to be converted into park land again), there it% I think, a danger that some of your readers may think, from studying the article, that similar returns can be obtained from ordinary farm land, farmed under ordinary conditions, with the usual and necessary rotation of cropping. Such could not possibly be the case even from the best arable land.
I farm over 1;000 acres of land, mostly arable, and also was ordered in 1918 to plough up about 40 acres of grass land, and could, if I took this acreage alone, show how this land is profit- able under cereals for the first two years after ploughing up; but it is not to the economic interest of the farm as a whole to keep this land under the plough, and it is being reeowu with grass at an initial expense of over £5 per acre; and it will be years before this land gains back, the fertility and value it had under grass, which has now been expended on the cereals produced to my immediate, but not permanent, financial advantage.—I am, Sir, &c., JOHN F. WILYNS. Elmdon Bury, Saffron Walden, Essex.
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