SECTION M.— AGRICULTURE. 



LEY-FARMING AND A LONG-TERM 

 AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



ADDRESS BY 



PROF. R. G. STAPLEDON, C.B.E., M.A., 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



My own leaning is towards the word ' ley,' although according to the 

 Oxford Dictionary this word is obsolete, but in adopting ley I follow the 

 best agricultural precedent. 



It is not my intention to talk about farming for laymen, for in my 

 opinion ley-farming properly understood is the most highly scientific 

 farming that it is possible to practise. The ley farmer must be a proficient 

 stock-master and a proficient cultivator, versed alike in the arts of animal 

 and crop husbandry. ' To be a farmer ' is ' to till the soil,' and in 

 ' till ' is implied the bringing of the soil into a fit condition for the 

 production of crops — the care of the soil. A farmer in the true and 

 proper meaning of the word is a man who has ever before him two pur- 

 poses : the one to put all his fields to optimum use in respect of com- 

 modity production, and the other, and of even greater ultimate importance, 

 to attend to the maximum need of all his fields in respect of soil fertility. 

 Thus judged, my thesis is that the ley farmer is a farmer in excelsis. 



My address has to do with the most honourable, and what should be 

 the most venerated, aspect of the whole of agriculture — the rotation, for 

 upon the rotation I claim everything depends. So I at least respond to 

 the honour that has been done me in placing me in the position in which 

 I find myself to-day in the selection of my subject. It is a neglected 

 subject. I am the first President of Section M to do hornage to the 

 rotation. I have researched amongst the utterances of my distinguished 

 predecessors ; incidentally, although only of interest to myself, I find 

 that the first Presidential Address to Section M was given by Sir Thomas 

 Middleton in the year that I came into Wales and began my researches on 

 grassland — that was in 191 2. The only mention of the rotation in the 

 total of twenty-four addresses that have been given was by Sir John 

 Russell, who in 191 6 started off promisingly with winter corn : spring 

 corn : fallow, but to my intense disappointment followed the rotation no 

 further. 



In view of the immense amount that has been published during the 

 present century it is not without significance that the leading agricultural 

 journals contain but few articles dealing primarily, or even remotely, 



