178 Suggested Changes of Farming System. 



we should occasionally meet in order to interchange opinions and 

 mutually communicate our experiences. You will observe that I 

 have proposed for our consideration the changes necessary in our 

 farming system, and I have done so because it is becoming every day 

 more clear that farming on the old lines is unsuited to the times, 

 and because circumstances are gradually becoming more and more 

 unfavourable to it. Here, for instance, is one important difficulty to 

 which, so far as I am aware, no attention has as yet been called — 

 the fact that, as compared with twenty years ago, we have a shortage 

 of no less than one and a half millions of children in Great Britain. 

 This indicates a movement of great importance to farmers, and if the 

 people of these islands are showing such an active desire not to 

 propagate their species it is high time that we should propagate our 

 ideas as to the best way of working our farms with a smaller number 

 of hands. For the present the anti-child-producing movement seems 

 to be confined to the towns and manufacturing centres, but it is sure 

 to spread to the country ; in the meanwhile there will, of course, 

 be a much larger draft of population from the country districts, and 

 consequently we must look forward to scarcer and dearer labour. 

 With the other adverse conditions you are all familiar, and I need 

 only say that all of them are, from whatever point of view we may 

 regard the subject, unfavourable to the present farming system. 

 What that is we all know — expensive tillage, the use of purchased 

 foods and manures, and a rapid rotation of crops, calling for much 

 expense and labour, and entailing much exhaustion of the soil. 

 When prices were high they could cover the cost of production and 

 leave a good profit, but not so, of course, when prices fell ; and we 

 must recognise the fact that high farming on the present lines is no 

 remedy for low prices, and the further fact that the only remedy 

 available is to lower the cost of production. This may be effected, 

 as I shall show, by an alteration of system, which will lead not only 

 to the utmost economy of production, but render all production more 

 free from risk than it is at present. The whole of my experiments at 

 Olifton-on-Bowmont have been devoted to these ends, and I am now 

 satisfied that whereas the old farming system gave us good crops at 

 a high cost, wo can, with the aid of improved farming, produce as 

 good, and often much better, crops at less cost, and certainly with 

 far less risk from adverse seasons. With it we can not onlv repair 

 the exhaustion of the soil, caused by our farming system, but 

 continually increase its fertility, and while this can be done our 

 expenditure can be largely reduced. These views are fully set out in 

 my "Agricultural Changes" and "Laying Down Land to Grass." 

 I am told that many farmers would adopt my system, either wholly 

 or in part, but that they are deterred from doing so by the cost of 

 the mixtures I have most recently used. One of my objects in 

 addressing you to-day is to show how a farmer may most cheaply, 

 and at the same time effectively, modify his farming system so as to 

 bring it into line with the conditions of these times. 



If the farmer has his land in fine physical condition, and, from 



