A Great Future for Contractors in Agriculture
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Our Agricultural Correspondent
There is a Firm Place for the Specialist who cart Offer Comprehensive and Efficient Service, says Professor R. G. FARMING of to-morrow, where so much that is costly and unsatisfactory. to-day will give place to . mechanization, thorough tillage and the scientific organization of marketing, is . foreshadowed by Professor R. G.
\ Stapledon, the eminent agricultural authority, in his book "The Land Now and To-morrow." The book is full of ideas for the future in respect of mechanical fanning and transport.
An aspect of the agricultural position not often recognized is that the operations of current farming and land improvement are entirely different, and frequently so markedly different as to clash. But all the progress in agricultural operations now at hand must be preceded by land improvement, which . is a big and expensive business.
To begin at the beginning with land improvement, one must commence with grass. Grass improvement, experience reveals, requires implements and power on a scale equal to that required for the regular operation of amble land.
All these matters are fully dealt with by Professor Stapledon. If the land is to be improved to the best advantage, he says, and on a tilling scale, special and costly implements are frequently a necessity. Land improvement requires, to a large extent, different implements merit and mechanized farming will, in the future, be done by contractors.
This is what Professor Stapiedon says about the contractor: `` I foresee a very great future for the contractor in all matters connected with the land. Without the intervention of the contractor I cannot imagine how modern and expensive machinery is to be brought to bear on all the acts of husbandry, still less those of land improvement.
At least, without the contractor in almost every district, or withotit very close co-operation between the farmers themselves, I think there is a grave risk of the family farmer being slowly and steadily swallowed up by large and fully equipped farming companies, and this to my mind would be the greatest ill that could befall the countryside."
He goes on to point out that, for many years, the contractor has played a large part in the arable districts. It appears that the replacement of steam tackle by the gyrotiller will extend the scope of the contractor, and it may be increased even more by the advent of the combined harvester-thresher, and by plant for the drying of grass.
Here is the whole point : "The more specialistic farming becomes, and it is inevitable that it will become increasingly specialistic, the greater will be the need for specialistic jobs being performed by specialists. This applies to she use of lethal and in themselves din
gerous chemicals for killing weeds and pests; special knowledge, special care and special plant are essential.
"There is always a tendency in the direction of the small man having too much capital tied up in implements but seldom used, and in this regard he cannot possibly compete with the big men; it is only the contractor who can come to his rescue, for primitive methods cannot long survive in competition with up-to-date and scientific methods."
The grass-land farmer and the half-. grass half-arable farmer need the help of .the. contractor, as much; or nearly as much, as does the completely arable man. The nucleus of a contracting system, the Professor states, exists in every district. There are the haulage contractor, who carries both live and dead stock, the peripatetic threshing machinist and, most important of all, those who possess tractors for the re moval and haulage of timber. In addition, of course, there is the ploughing and cultivating contractor.
The farmer would like to have the services of the contractor equipped with a tractor and a proper set of improving implements, and informed as to the technique appropriate to each situation in his particular district, to complete the work at a fixed price per acre. Professor Stapledon .wishes to see agricultural education committees carrying out, or arranging with contractors to carry out, "demonstration contracts" in land improvement. • The equipment necessary for tackling the improvement of hill land is given as a track-laying tractor, a lorry, an extra-strong plough with high clearance, sundry heavy scratching implements, manure and seed drills, which would involve an expenditure of capital amounting to approximately t1,300.