ft 



Europe. I do not advise you as to the kind of crop you 

 should produce; the greatest practical expert in agri- 

 culture could make no general statement which would' 

 apply to all farmers and all kinds of land. The thing 

 you have to do is to make your farms produce to the 

 utmost you know them capable of bearing. Nothing 

 will produce less than grass. Grass has borne in times of 

 peace all it can do. The uttermost stock that grass land 

 can bear has been calculated, and every farmer knows 

 to a single unit of stock what quantity his grazing lands 

 will support if untilled. By this method no increase is 

 possible. It is only by tillage methods that the acres 

 which feed one cow will feed three, and it is tillage of 

 one kind or another you must adopt if you are to pro- 

 duce more as the times demand. The agricultural in- 

 structors in your county can advise you in these matters, 

 if you venture upon crops you have not hitherto grown. 

 Our own contributor, Mr. Wibberley, has made famous- 

 a system which he calls continuous cropping, which will, 

 he has proved, enable the farmer to double, or even in 

 some cases to treble, his milk production or the number 

 of fattening cattle his acres will support. Most of you 

 are familiar with Mr. Wibberley 's methods. His articles- 

 and book on the subject are available, and he himself 

 and others trained by him can be consulted up to their 

 limit of human energy. They do not dread work but 

 invite it. So that, so far as technical advice is concerned 

 you are amply equipped in Ireland. 



11 But," you will say, " knowledge will not enable 

 us to produce if labour is lacking." Well, that 

 it is also possible in large measure to over- 

 come by the use of efficient implements and 

 power machinery. " Are we to buy all these im- 

 plements, cultivators, disc harrows, potato diggers, 

 reapers and binders, steam threshers, and what not," 

 you will ask? " That would be a huge expenditure." 

 Yes, it would, if sniall farmers had to buy them for in- 

 dividual use. It would not pay. But it pays the big 



