Our Agriculture will Rise Again. 5 



attempt is made to plod on with a system which was 

 very suitable to the conditions of twenty years ago 

 (though even then many modifications could have been 

 profitably introduced), but which is entirely out of joint 

 with times when constantly-improving communications 

 are bringing us more and more into competition with 

 cheaper labour and better climates. But, judging by 

 the financial result of my own farming in recent years, 

 I see no reason to despond if we turn our attention to 

 altering our system of agriculture in the direction of 

 limiting our cereals to the utmost, producing them at 

 the lowest possible cost, and introducing improved 

 grasses and other kinds of forage plants. For we have 

 an admirable forage-growing climate, and it must be 

 remembered that the same communications which flood 

 our country with agricultural produce can also bring 

 hither cheaper feeding stufis and manures, and that 

 these have consequently already largely declined in 

 price in recent years. And if these aids are taken full 

 advantage of, and the necessary changes in our system 

 are carried out, British agriculture will gradually rise, 

 not perhaps into as profitable a state as it occupied in 

 the best of times, but into as secure and satisfactory 

 a position as any in the world. 



Finally, it should be considered that the system I 

 have to advocate — one depending entirely upon stock — 

 will be much safer than our old arable culture. For 

 with that we had the maximum of risk, combined with 

 the maximum amount of destruction to the fertility of 

 the soil. And as to that point we have the testimony 

 of the first great meeting of 400 Aberdeenshire farmers, 

 held upwards of twenty years ago, who declared that 

 one of the three great causes of their difiiculties was the 

 exhaustion of the soil. But the system which I have 

 to urge in these pages will continually enrich the soil, 

 and, what is often of greater importance, improve its 

 physical condition. And it may be well to notice in 

 this connection that the system to be proposed will not 



