ILLUSTRATION FARMS OF THE COMMITTEE ON LANDS 9 



APPENDIX No. 3 



stands? It is one thing to have lip ability to utter a phrase and another to have the 

 knowledge of its meaning from experience of the reality it stands for. A systematic 

 rotation of crops helps his farmer to spread his vrork over nearly the vyhole year, and 

 that is a good thin^. It helps in the cleaning of his land. By having a hoe or green 

 fodder crop growing in rotation, he keeps the land clean for the sake of the advantage 

 to that crop. I confess there are not many farmers who are willing to cut weeds just 

 for the sake of seeing the land clean. That is not a state of mind and action easy 

 to bring about. That may be why our weed su^ppression laws are nearly all dead 

 letters. You can hardly get a man to go and cut weeds for the sake of seeing the 

 fields clean; but he will keep his fields reasonably clean if he finds that the practice of 

 doing that pays for the labour in the immediate crop. That is whei*e the systematic 

 rotation of crops comes in as an effective means of cleaning land. Its adoption 

 will not dispense with all need for legislation on weeds, but it will make 

 the application of our knowledge effective towards keeping down weeds. Sys- 

 tematic rotation provides for a variety of products and it results in a 

 large increase in the yield per acre of every one of the crops. Mr. Grisdale, now 

 Director of Dominion Experimental Farms, gave the committee an address on that 

 subject last year,, and has spoken many times concerning the immense increase in the 

 yield of crops from this practice. At Rothamsted, in England — the first agricultural 

 research station — where the experiment was conducted for 32 years between growing 

 wheat and other grain crops in rotation, with a clover or bean or grass crop in between 

 once every four years, and growing grain crops continuously, the gain was 114 per 

 cent in the yield per acre of wheat from the systematic rotation which included 

 clover or beans. The meaning of systematic rotation of crops is to have this sort 

 of thing going on: that each crop is grown in such a way as to make and leave the 

 land better for the next crop. That is the means of progress and of conserving 

 fertility. 



How many farms out of the 1,212 surveyed, followed a systematic rotation in 

 1911;' Out of 100 farms in Xova Scotia tliere was systematic rotation on just 

 eight; in Prince Edward Island, on six; in New Brunswick, on thirteen; out of two 

 hundred farms in Quebec, on just eight; and out of three hundred farms in Ontario, 

 on 159. In Manitoba there was none except the rotation with grain and fallow of 

 which I have spoken; in Saskatchewan and Alberta, none, and in British Columbia, 

 11 out of 100. 



Q. How do you account for that in the three Prairie Provinces? 



A. Up to the present time no one has applied in a large way the growing of clover,, 

 the growing of com, the growing of roots, or the growing of any grass crop in between 

 the grain crops. A few farmers have begun in a small way on part of their farms. 

 The problem is to have that done in a larger way on those farms and then on other 

 farms and so spread over the Provinces. 



In Nova Scotia 19 per cent of the farms had a systematic rotation on a small 

 part of their farms. I will now give you the Provinces and percentages of farms on 

 which there were no definite plans, or systematic rotation for crops, at all. This is 

 not from the collector's opinion, it is from the farmers' own statements of their 

 practice. In Nova Scotia 47 per cent. In Prince Edward Island, 90 per cent had an 

 irregular, indefinite rotation. In New Brunswick — I am speaking of those who had 

 no rotation with any system in it — 40 per cent ; in Quebec 76 per cent ; in Ontario 17 

 per cent. I have already dealt with the Western Prairie Provinces. In British 

 Columbia there were 37 per cent without any definite plan. 



You can see the gravity of the situation which all this reveals. If rotation of 

 crops is shown by experience to be a chief means for i>ermanently profitable farming, 

 keeping the land clean, and giving satisfactory employment to labour, and only a 

 small percentage of our farmers, outside of Ontario, follow it, how can we get more 

 farmers to adopt some suitable system? They do follow an excellent system of rota- 



