HOW FARMERS MIGHT LIVE RENT FREE.* IF our farming does
not improve, it will not be for lack of panaceas. They are so plentiful that it is no easy task to get the person most concerned to take an interest in some of them. That he is particularly sceptical as to the value of panaceas set forth in books is notorious. The impartial observer who knows something of agriculture understands the causes of his distrust. An amazing amount of rubbish is written on rural matters every year. Even with the best will, it is difficult for a man unaccustomed to buying and choosing books to tell the grain from the chaff. Then, like other people who are not habituated to reading, the farmer has ordinarily quite an exaggerated impression of the financial returns which authors are able to obtain. He thinks that the man who writes a book for farmers stands to make very easily a great deal of money at their expense. He regards an author, therefore, With very much the same suspicion as be would a strange cattle-dealer. The truth is, we need hardly say, that from few classes of writing are more modest monetary returns derived than from the exposition of agricultural subjects. Very many of those who put pen to paper do so, to a greater or lesser degree, in a philanthropic or patriotic spirit. This, we feel sure, is the spirit which has actuated Mr. H. B. M. Buchanan and Mr. J. J. Willis in the preparation of a little sixpennyworth entitled To Manure at a Profit : Every _Farmer his own Experimenter. Mr. Buchanan is, of course, the author of the well-known series of "Country Readers." Mr. Willis is the keenly interested Superintendent of the Rothamsted Field Experiments, to whom every visitor to the great Lewes • To Manure at a Profit : Every Partner his own Experimenter. By H. B. X. Buchanan and J. J. Willis. London: Mark Lane Express Office, 3 Wellington Street, Strand. [ed.]
foundation is so much indebted for clearly given information. Messrs. Buchanan and Willis , stake some little reputation, therefore, on the following, statement of theirs. "We are of opinion," they write, "that if advantage be taken of the best agricultural knowledge of the day, and that knowledge be applied to the land in a skilful and. practical manner by experienced farmers, the increased net yield over average returns would pay the average rental of the farming lands of this country." In other words, the authors promise the farmers of Great Britain that they have only to follow their advice in order to live rent free ! This obviously beats the " offer " which the orators of the Tariff Reform vans are taking down into the country. The reader who knows some- thing about agricultural practice is predisposed, however, to listen to what Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Willis have to say. Unlike most writers who are not themselves agriculturists, they do not abase Mr. Giles for a thoroughgoing ignoramus. They ,know, as all experts are convinced, that "the farming lands of England, taking them as a whole, are better farmed than the lands of any other country that we have bad any experience of. The lands and crops are cleaner, more generously mai:lured ; the livestock looks healthier, better bred and more wisely fed." Nevertheless the fact remains, they contend, that "the great majority of our farmers are satisfied to grow their crops along the general lines of their forefathers—excellent lines mostly—but they do not follow sufficiently the results of experiments now being carried on in the different centres of research." The object of this little book is to describe these results in the plainest way, always with the proviso that they must be confirmed by simple experiments on the part of farmers themselves. As soil and 1:,...11)-soil, the aspect and the position of land, and its past cropping and feeding history vary infinitely, "the manures, their quantities, the methods of cultivation that may pay right well on your neighbour's farm may not pay equally well on yours." Writing like this is surely as practical as it is scientific.
The soil, we have all heard, needs humus, phosphates, nitrates, potash, and lime. The value of humus and lime is appreciated by every agriculturist, but there are still far too many farmers in whose minds phosphates, nitrates, and potash are more or less "lumped thegither " as "chemicals." Messrs. Buchanan and Willis make it quite clear that phosphates, nitrates, and potash do not "come to very much the same thing." They go on to plead for a plentiful supply of warm pure air in the soil; for a sufficient, but not an excessive, supply of moisture; and lastly, for conditions in which there may be a healthy bacterial life. It is not generally realised how easily the farmer can expand an acre into eight acres, or, at all events, make the one acre worth eight acres. By breaking down one-inch lumps of soil into one-eighth-of-an-inch lumps the area of little particles of soil round which the roots of the crops may twine in search of food is plainly increased eight times ! Without the provision of a proper supply of moisture and humus there can be no vigorous germ life in the soil. "We know now with practical certainty," our authors write, "that nitrates cannot be formed without the work of bacteria; and it may be that every process of breaking down and building up—in fact, all the varied processes, that are taking place in.the soil—are brought about by the agency of these living organisms, present in a thimble- ful of well-cultivated soil in such myriads that the imagination is paralysed at the mention of their numbers." Thousands and thousands of pounds are spent by farmers on artificial nitrates—the past five years' bill for " artificials " in the United States has been a quarter of a billion dollars—and much is talked about bringing nitrogen from the air and about applying nitro-cultures, but all has not yet been done that is possible to give a fair chance to the nitrifying organisms already in the soil and willing to work wonders without costing the farmer a penny. It is difficult to touch on the practical matters dealt with by Messrs. Buchanan and Willis without becoming too technical; but the lay reader as he turns over their pages will undoubtedly be struck by such points as the ease with which a ton of well-made and skilfully preserved manure can be got to do more than double the work of. a ton made in a slovenly and unscientific manner. When a. farmer allows the liquid manure from, say, a couple of dozen cows to run to waste be practically loses, in the course of a year, the benefit of a ton and a half of nitrate of soda, or of two and a half tons of the esteemed "guano," or a thousand crutloads of farmyard manure. That yearly loss would certainly "pay a good interest on a liquid manure tank, a chain pump, a cart for sprinkling the liquid over the grass land, and the extra cost of labour." After the thrifty use of liquid manure and well-made farmyard manure, the most economical mode of obtaining nitrogen is, of course, not by a wholesale application of " artifieials "—though they have a necessary place, as is demonstrated in this book—but by a wise utilisation of nitrogen-storing clover crops. As to the application of phosphoric acid and potash, our authors' teaching is remarkably simple. It is noted, we see, that while each ox sold off a farm removes no more potash than is con- tained in a barrow-load of hay, the phosphoric acid taken away is equal to that contained in two waggon-loads. With regard to hay, Messrs. Buchanan and Willis are of opinion that the crops of our permanent haying lands—the condition of which is, they think, "one of the weakest links in the chain of British agriculture "—might be readily doubled. Apply per acre of inferior pastures, during a four years period, farm- yard manure, slag, and nitrate of soda to the value, with cartage and labour, of 24 15s., and the yield might well be an extra ton of .hay, worth 23 a ton, or 212 in all,—" a profit due to the manuring for the four years, say of 27, or an extra profit of 35s. per acre over the acre not so treated." This return does not take into account the superior feeding value of the hay and the aftermath. We pass over several pages in the booklet devoted to reports of experiments and exact prescriptions for different sorts of haying land. One of the most interesting experiments is that in Northumberland, showing that a more profitable yield of mutton and hay was produced by sheep not fed with cake, but grazed on manured plots, than by sheep fed with cake, but grazed on unmanured plots. On a particular area there was a gain of about eight shillings for every shilling laid out on basic slag. It is probably the case that there are farmers who would simply disbelieve the statement that there are in Leicestershire pastures which have been so well used that the bullocks are turned out on them in April, and, with no other food given to them, are ready for the butcher in November.
We have given perhaps an inadequate idea of the scope and value of the hundred pages of facts and figures which Messrs. Buchanan and Willis have so painstakingly brought together; but then they lieal with matters not usually discussed in a general newspaper at all. Our reason for discussing them, how- ever inadequately, is that in our opinion, and in the opinion, we believe, of the best judges, it is writing like that in To Manure at a Profit—writing at once authoritative, popular, and level- headed—which should not only be placed before farmers, but be read by laymen who desire to form an accurate judgment on the agricultural situation in this country. We have had the panaceas of politicians for the land. Let us listen also to what rural students of the stamp of Mr. Buchanan and the Superintendent of Experiments at Rothamsted have to say. Like Mr. Primrose McConnell—successful tenant-farmer and B.Sc. (Agric.)—in his Diary of a Working Farmer, recently reviewed in these columns, they ask little or nothing from Parliament. Theirs is no tale of woe. "The farming lands of England," they declare, "are better farmed than the lands of any other country." Mr. Primrose McConnell makes it perfectly plain that it is no difficult matter for the really businesslike farmer to make a living, and never once mentions Protection. "There is no suggestion within the range of practical politics," Messrs. Buchanan and Willis assert, "that can materially help the farmer. That help must come from his own brains, his experience and training in the past, his powers of observation and adaptation, and lastly, but not least, the quality of his business methods." By all means have agricultural land fairly rated and the sale of impure food products rendered difficult or unprofitable; but "no fiscal reform yet suggested can directly help the farmer." The "permanent resuscitation of British farming," which the authors believe to be beginning, will "only be placed on a secure basis by a rational and more profitable system of manuring, and by making each acre of land and each head of livestock yield a higher profit than it does to-day." These are unquestionably the points which wise publicists will increasingly see it to be their duty to press upon the notice of British farmers. The theorist may talk about tariffs; the practical man will realise the common-seitse of concentrating attention on thrifty manuring and tilth, and on the importance of keeping cows which, for the same feeding, yield seven hundred gallons instead of five hundred, and sheep and beasts which "come into money" quicker and at smaller cost than the average, not to speak of self-respecting hens which lay, not eighty eggs in the year, but a hundred and fifty.
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