the Harvest in England The harvest of 1940 in England
has been one of the earliest Id best-gathered in the memory of man. If there must needs e a drought in this country, August is certainly the best anon for it to occur. The crop showed no better than ioderate, taken all round—the wheat above average, the oats wry much below. But such as it was, over large parts of the wth. at any rate, it has now all been stacked, in first-class Maion and with a minimum of labour for the farmers. The :suit is that (given moderate rain in a not too distant future) ley should be able to make an unusually early start with next 2r's crops ; and after ploughing their stubbles and sowing Icier the best conditions their winter-wheat, winter-oats, and re-grass, they should have a much better chance than last year to expand their areas of arable. To this expansion the Ministry of Agriculture and its County Agricultural Commit- tees must now bend their energies anew. The last autumn, winter and spring presented extraordinary difficulties for a ploughing-up policy, and the amount achieved did not bring the country's arable back even to the acreage of 1914. We ought now boldly to aim at that of 1918.
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