22 FARMING ON FACTORY LINES 



known in Ireland as good grazing or bullock-feeding 

 land. Prior to the application of the Continuous 

 Cropping system, the land had been devoted entirely 

 to the grazing of bullocks and a few sheep, the bul- 

 locks being bought-in in store condition and sold off, 

 fat. 



Many attempts to cultivate similar land in Ireland 

 had previously been made, but in every case, the 

 tillage had proved a disastrous failure. This, in the 

 writer's opinion, was due to the fact that the system 

 of tillage (generally a modification of the Norfolk 

 four-course rotation) was entirely unsuited to the 

 soil, climate, and labour conditions which obtained. 



MAN V. BULLOCKS 



Everybody concerned, except Sir Horace Plunkett 

 and myself, were strongly of the opinion that no 

 system of tillage could be made pay as well as grazing 

 on such land. In this latter statement we have an 

 illustration as to the low level to which our agri- 

 cultural outlook has sunk. The same idea is preva- 

 lent in every good grazing land district in these 

 countries, and, in principle, means nothing more nor 

 less than that a grazing beast is a more productive 

 and a more economic unit than a human being 1 ! In 

 other words, the experiment may be regarded as a 

 comparative or economic test between human beings 

 and the beasts of the field ! 



When land is merely grazed, the reduction in 

 fertility is very small, and, for this reason, one of 

 the conditions of the experiment was that practically 

 all the food grown on the farm should be fed to 

 animals, or, in farmers' language, " the crops should 

 walk to market." A slight exception to this rule 

 was made to the extent that it would be permissible 



