7 SEPTEMBER 1945, Page 14

The New Harvesting

A correspondent, a woman landworker, is grieved at the suggestion that the cutter-and-binder has taken all severity of labour out of harvesting. Doubtless she has ended a long day's work in great weariness. But the general truth is undoubted. Apart from the hand-mowing and binding, the shocking of the sheaves is easier because they are uniform in shape and size, and the technique is more easily acquired, because the knot and the slope of the base of the sheaf are in a definite relation. I have been watching small boys from a holiday camp doing the work quickly and on the whole efficiently. A large field of very clean wheat was in stack six days after the machines entered the field, so dry were the ears and slick the work.