364 



Forage Crops of Denmark. [JUly, 



FORAGE CROPS OF DEMARK. 



W. H. Parker, M.A., 



Director, National Institute of Agricultural Botany. 



On a casual glance through a current table of agricultural 

 statistics, the eye will encounter the following item : — 



" Denmark. — Acreage under roots for feeding (mangolds, 

 swedes and turnips), 1919, 678,000 acres" — a bald statement, 

 not worthy, apparently, of much serious thought on the part 

 of the British agriculturist. 



It has been part of Mr. Harald Faber's obviously congenial 

 task* to prove the fallacy of such an impression ; and well has 

 he done his work. His book is small, only consisting of a 

 hundred pages (exclusive of the excellent foreword written by 

 Sir Robert Greig), but each one of those pages contains material 

 which should be studied with care by all who have at heart the 

 progress of British farming. 



Growth and Improvement of Root Crops. — Mr. Faber has divided 

 his material into four chapters, the first two of which 

 deal mainly with roots. He starts by describing the prejudice 

 with which Danish farmers of the 'sixties, 'seventies and 

 'eighties regarded the practice of growing roots for cattle 

 feeding, and states that their main contentions were that cows 

 so fed gave milk of poor quality, that the butter became tainted, 

 and, especially, that t was uneconomi':al to grow a crop of 

 which the largest proportion was water. 



The first factor which contributed to the correction of these 

 ideas was the publication of the results of a series of experiments 

 carried out by N. J. Fjord, of the Royal Agricultural College, 

 Copenhagen. In 1888 he started, in co-operation with certain 

 Danish farmers, a series of practical feeding trials with pigs 

 and cattle. The results obtained by 1890 may be summarised 

 as follows : — (i) He proved that, with the exception of the 

 criticism as to water-content, the farmers' objections were 

 groundless ; (2) It was shown that roughly 8 lb. of roots were 

 equal in feeding value to i lb. of corn, but that the feeding value 

 of different varieties of roots was directly proportional to their 

 content of dry matter, i lb. of dry matter equalling i lb. of corn. 

 The farmers soon calculated that one acre of land could, on this 

 basis, either yield about 1,900 lb. of food as corn, or 5,107 lb. 

 of dry matter of equal value, lb. for lb., when under roots. They 

 grew roots but demanded varieties with small water-content. 



Fjord's experiments were well planned, as every reader of 



* Harald Faber : Forage Crops in Denmark (Longmans Green 6c Co., 

 London, 1920, 6s.). 



