FARMING, STOCK BREEDING, AND 

 ROTATION OF CROPS 



In undertaking a survey of the main features of the general 

 forming of Denmark we have to keep in view that we are deaHng 

 witli a country not only less than half the size of Scotland, but 

 with one that has been, on the whole, poorly endowed by nature. 

 The sandy detritus of the ice age, the scrapings of hard crystalline 

 rocks, has given Denmark more poor than good land, and nuich of 

 it we could know by no other name than a " hungry soil." Nor is 

 the climate congenial. The situation is insular, but the islands 

 and peninsula constituting the country are in proximity to the cold 

 German Ocean on the one hand, and the icy Baltic on the other, 

 while they are near enough Finland and Russia to come under the 

 influence of the rigorous cold of a continental winter. As the 

 country is low lying, and either flat or undulating, there being no 

 sheltering hills — the highest point above sea level is 550 feet — 

 the country nnist often be exposed to the fury of harsh, sweeping 

 winter winds. The summer, although very good, is so short and 

 dry that oats have scarcely time to grow and mature an abundant 

 crop, and one of the problems engaging the attention of Experi- 

 ment Stations in Denmark is to find a variety that can be sown 

 one year and harvested the next ; while farm live stock have to 

 be comfortably housed and tended within doors for the greater 

 part of the year. 



In considering the transition during the last thirty to forty years 

 of Danish agriculture to its present state, one is forcibly struck 

 with the fact that while agriculturists in our own country have 

 tried to meet the exigency of the times by laying land down into 

 grass, and have sought retrenchment by the economy of reducing 

 the labour on the land, the Danish farmer has found prosperity 

 entirely in the opposite direction. The Danes have their land and 

 little else, and, poor though it be, they have bravely undertaken 

 the task of making it keep the Danish people. What legislation 

 could do to foster agriculture, the one industry of the country, has 

 been done. Government assistance, improved land laws and systems 

 of land tenure, expert guidance and control in the management 

 of farm affairs, along with education and co-operation, have 

 gradually changed Denmark and its agriculture from a distressed 

 condition to one of prosperity. Large estates have been very 

 generally converted into small farms held by peasant proprietors 

 who till their own land ; the easy going methods of former days 

 have given place to carefully directed intensive and skilful farm- 



