J 06 EXPEBIMENT STATION RECORD. [Vol.38 



horses for fanners' use, to be distributed through the county agri- 

 cultural committees. A so-called " horse officer" is provided in each 

 county to organize the scheme. The horses are hired out to the 

 farmers at fixed rates, on the latter's agreement to increase the 

 acreage of cereals. Traveling gangs of plowmen also do plowing, 

 harrowing, cultivating, etc., for small farmers at fixed rates. 



The tractor has sprung into prominence as a means of " speeding 

 up " production, and has been supplied by the government in in- 

 creasing numbers. Some six hundred tractors of various kinds were 

 apportioned among the county agricultural committees in the spring 

 of 1917, to help farmers prepare and cultivate their land, and proved 

 so satisfactory that the Board of Agriculture purchased several 

 thousand for the 1918 season. The operators are in part assigned 

 from the army or have been exempted for this service, and women 

 have been utilized for the purpose to a considerable extent. For 

 some time the board has maintained schools for tractor operators, 

 both male and female. 



. But the provision of farm machinery does not stop with the 

 tractor. The government has procured a great number of farm 

 implements and machines, ranging all the way from disks and drills, 

 cultivators and harrows, to reapers and binders. These are rented 

 out to farmers under proper supervision. The Board of Agricul- 

 ture also arranged with the Threshing Machine Owners' iVssociation 

 to form gangs of women to work with their outfits. 



Indeed, women are employed everywhere in farm work, and the 

 Women's Land Army, recruited by the woman's branch of the Food 

 Production Department, has become a very large and broadly recog- 

 nized factor in production. The president of the Board of Agricul- 

 ture has lately stated that " every able-bodied country woman is 

 being pressed into the urgent service of food production," — this in 

 a country where in normal times women play practically no part in 

 the national food production, as they do on the continent. 



The difficulty of securing fertilizers and seeds has been greatly re- 

 lieved by the government, which has established prices, put into 

 effect unusually drastic laws for inspection, and furnished enormous 

 quantities of both classes of supplies. Although England is the 

 greatest seed broking center of the world, English merchants selling 

 home-grown seed to foreign countries Avith a foreign certificate as 

 to quality, there has hitherto been no offi.cial control of seeds in Eng- 

 land and Wales. A seed-testing order Avas issued by the Board of 

 Agriculture during the year, and an official seed-testing station was 

 established under it. 



Feed control has also been instituted during the past year, and 

 recently a compound fertilizer order was issued by the Minister of 

 Munitions, which provides for the first time for a guarantee of com- 



