APPENDIX I. 



LOP-SIDED FARMING.* 



Since the commencement of the war farmers have been 

 overwhelmed with orders and advice as to how their business 

 should be carried on. At one time they are exhorted to 

 increase their flocks and herds ; then within a very short 

 time the order of things is reversed, and extensive powers 

 are given to County War Agricultural Executive Committees 

 in order to bring every possible acre under the plough, so as 

 to make the country, as far as possible, self-supporting 

 during the war. Surely no person who looks far enough 

 ahead, would disagree with. the object of attempting to make 

 this country more or less self-supporting. The chief point 

 which one may legitimately criticise would be the means 

 and ways suggested of carrying out this beneficent pro- 

 gramme. 



To my mind the ploughing up of many of the pastures 

 laid down or tumbled down in recent years will be one of the 

 greatest boons to British agriculture, inasmuch as these pas- 

 tures are not, at present, canying anything like the head 

 of stock which this land is capable of doing ; and, further, 

 because the land can produce, for a few years at least, good 

 cereal and other crops which are so vital to the food supply 

 of the country during the war. The great danger which lies 

 ahead in the carrying out of the Cultivation of Lands Order, 

 is to force farmers to adopt a lop-sided system of farming. 

 In fact many farmers are already suffering from the effects 

 of bringing cereal crops too closely together in the rotation 

 with the result that the land is becoming more or less ex- 

 hausted and much more foul than was the case before the 

 war. 



* This article appeared in the Farmer and Stockbreeder of Oct. 1st, 1917. 



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