CHAPTER XVI 



CAPITAL AND CONTINUOUS CROPPING 



The great bar to an immediate adoption of continuous 

 cropping or any intensive system of tillage by the small 

 farmer, and often the big farmer, is the lack of capital. 



Even where capital is limited, however, the small 

 farmer can do much by making an economical use of 

 what he has. For instance, if a farmer could anually 

 invest in his holding the large amount he at present 

 annually spends in the purchase of feeding stuffs his 

 capital would very soon increase. This is possible by 

 raising cheap home-grown food, especially of an 

 albuminous nature, like many continuous crops are, 

 and thus dispensing to a large extent with the present 

 very heavy cake bills. 



Again, one often hears of smallholders in England 

 paying heavy prices for farmyard manure, up to 8s. 

 per ton by the time it is on the land. Now, a crop of, 

 say, giant rape, can be grown at a cost of from 2s. 6d. 

 to 3s. per ton, and after being consumed on the farm 

 by stock its manurial value per ton will be — according 

 to the Leeds University Table on Manurial Values — 

 4s. 3d. per ton. 



A twenty-ton crop of rape can easily be grown to the 

 acre. This, consumed, will certainly fertilise the land 

 as well as twenty tons of farmyard manure, which even 

 at 5s. per ton will cost £5 per acre, whereas the cost of 

 producing twenty tons of giant rape at the outside will 



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