This is believed to be the second part of a lecture given
to a Workers Education Association weekend course, in December 1951, by Wilfred
Bernard Mercer – who was the first principal of the Cheshire College of Agriculture
(now known as Reaseheath College).
It is commonly said that the death of Victoria coincided with the end of a social era as well as the end of the century. Certainly we stood in 1900 on the threshold of a larger and more advanced life in Britain. The first fruits of the Education Act of 1872 were being gathered. We were becoming a better educated people. Thereafter everyone could at last read and write and were being supplied with a growing flood of popular literature, admittedly of very varying quality, but nevertheless better than no literature at all. The whole of the Western world was beginning to accumulate mechanical aids all of which tended to lessen physical toil. In the towns public services were improving vastly, water and gas were being laid into every house, modern plumbing, roads and sewerage, houses were better. Conditions of life in factories were improving, first as a result of numerous Factory Acts, child labour was abolished. Conditions in the country still lagged - no light, but no standardisation.
The internal combustion engine had arrived. Admittedly the motor car was at first preceded by the man with a red flag, but its appearance on the road was a portent. It was destined in a few years to transform the life of England. In the first place, it enormously enlarged the radius of living for urban populations. More than anything else it brought into existence Acacia Road, Lime Grove and all the rest of suburbia. Its effects in the countryside were even more profound. For it brought down the isolation of a population which since the beginning of time had lived in loneliness.
As an industry, farming was of course at a very low ebb. Prices had fallen to a disastrous level, land was going out of cultivation, bankruptcies were common, rents were low, estates were degenerating, amongst farmers a spirit of defeatism was universal, no one had ever known prosperity, the memories of the disasters of ‘79 and ‘80 still lingered. The whole record of the preceding twenty years went to show that the people who survived were those who spent the least. George Elliot‘s immortal old Mrs. Patten (of Cross Farm) who had got rich chiefly by the negative process of spending nothing. Sheer graft was the supreme virtue in farming, writers of the period spoke of this attitude as a lack of confidence amongst farmers, but that was an understatement, it was more like cynical fatalism, it is difficult to exaggerate the influence of what such an atmosphere had on all the rising generation. They accepted penury the natural result of farming. Conditions like these were not likely to attract the leading spirits in any generation. most of the brighter boys looked therefore to urban life or to emigration, and so the trek from the countryside continued.
The report of the famous Royal Commission of 1893 to 97 (it took four years over its task) was one long dirge and members confessed their inability to suggest any permanent solution to the problem of the depression, especially monetary. Publication of their reports had, however, the real merit of attracting attention to the trials of farming and possible methods of bringing alleviation - worst in the east - small family farms – milk - tenure. Many of agriculture’s troubles were of course common to other industries, in particular fluctuation in prices. In some respects it was more fortunate indeed than other industries, there was much less labour unrest.
In industry strikes were a rare source of loss to everybody concerned. There was, however, in the country a great body of thought which for the sake of a name I include under the general head of liberalism, which was not content to accept the trials and frustrations of the existing order as due to the blind and uncontrollable forces of economics. Many of them were of course liberals in name as well as in principle, but outside of the liberal party there were many others: Wells, Shaw and the Webbs, to name a few who had no particular political loyalties and called themselves by various names, sufficient that they were all earnest students of economics and sociology. By far the most striking political figure was of course Joseph Chamberlain. Though associated with the Conservatives he was rational in outlook, a self-made man, never content with the existing order if he thought he could improve it. He had been a pioneer in municipal developments. He was three times the Lord Mayor of Birmingham and he had championed municipal enterprise in directions which today we should call social welfare. He became convinced that most of our troubles arose from the fact that we were a free trade country in a world of protective trade, and that the only method of maintaining our commercial strength lay in imposition of tariffs on imported goods. He included amongst the imported goods of course wheat, though he was not in the least interested in agriculture, and throughout the course of a long campaign his proposal to tax our stable food was of course a fact of first consequence: “Up on the stump lives Brummy Joe, it is taxing food that makes him go”. It proved, however, an abortive campaign and all he succeeded in doing was in wrecking his own party for the liberals pledged to free trade and came in in overwhelming force in 1906.
From this date our present welfare state may be said to start, for the group which took over power under Campbell Bannerman and later Asquith was pledged to a break in political tradition They felt that the State could no longer stand aside from trade and social life, but was justified in direct steps to secure social welfare. They were concerned too to out the power of wealth partly too the landed interest. It happened that this campaign coincided with a purely constitutional struggle between the House of Commons and the House of Lords but that was a mere accident or a consequential. The landed classes were of course still a very powerful community, owing to the rise of the scale of trading rents were no longer of such great consequence in farming. as they had been, but the owner still controlled tenancies and after all a man cannot farm unless he has got a farm. The life of the country landlord was still the spacious gracious thing it had been. The social prestige of land ownership was still as high as ever. He suffered a great deal of vilification in the political controversies of the times but this did him no real harm on his own pitch where he was still the squire to everyone. Of far greater consequence was the steep increase in death duties which virtually set a limit to the continued existence of family estates. These duties were destined to be raised yet higher as time went on, but Lloyd George’s death duties were in truth the knell of the great estates, for it was evident that no agricultural estate could stand the continued drain of a large part of its capital value at the death of each successive owner. From that date onwards it became virtually certain that large estates could be maintained only by continuous infusion of capital from some other source, and as a matter of history, practically all estates commenced to dwindle from that time.
For many reasons it is convenient to divide the first
half century at the year 1930. For the great world-wide recession of the years
1929-32 might well be described as the black death has been described - as an
economical water-shed. The three decades
1910 to 1930 form a continuous tale, rent it is true by the great chasm of 1914-18,
but unified at last by the fact that our trading life was carried on under the
old regime. We suffered throughout from booms
and slumps in trade, with sharp rises and falls in prices and a growing burden
of unemployment arising therefrom. There
was very little unemployment in farming because the industry was losing
population steadily to industry. Output
was fairly static and the decline in labour strength was made good by a steady
rise in mechanisation. Special returns were obtained by the ministry in 1908
and again in 1925, on the basis of which the Ministry calculated the total
output of the country, so that we have a fair idea of the general progress
made. Before leaving the record of the
liberal government, I must refer to another of Lloyd George’s Acts: the Road
Fund Development Act of 1909. This act made available the sum of two million
pounds for roads and agricultural development, a special Commission being set
up to administer it. From this fund large grants were made available for
agricultural research, this was largely due the powerful advocacy of A. D.
Hall, who had taken over the Directorship of Rothamsted when Gilbert died.
The broad lines of our economic history are indicated by
the general trend of prices. They rose to enormous heights, roughly trebled
during the war. Almost immediately
afterwards they fell catastrophically to a level perhaps 50% above pre-war. It
would take me far beyond the limits of this address to discuss the causes of
these violent changes. Broadly they arose from the dissolution of the war. Reparations, real and imaginary, and
revolutionary political changes in European countries. So far as agriculture was concerned, the one
fact that stood out clearly was that hardly any nation could avoid the
repercussions of international affairs on its own agricultural economy. We of all countries in the world were most
severely affected thereby since we were the chief importing country drawing
vast supplies of wheat, oil seeds, meat dairy produce, from the ends of the
earth. By far the gravest effect of the
violent price changes was the influence on level of employment. Unemployment had been a growing social evil
prior to the war. From the end of the
war onwards it was the dominant issue in our social life. All through the ‘30s we had to maintain 10%
to 20% of our people in idleness. This
had a great effect on the public conscience.
In respect of employment, agriculture fared perhaps
better than industry. All through the
period the number of persons employed fell away steadily. But there was never any real unemployment
problem in farming. Trade Unionism grew very slowly indeed, but during the war
statutory minima were fixed. It is true that the original Act was repealed
almost immediately after the war, but it was revived in a different manner in
1924 by an Act which set up County Wages Committees with power to fix minimum
rates.
The fortunes of farmers fluctuated as violently as
prices. Down to the beginning of the war it would perhaps be fair to say that
most types of farming yielded a modest living. Certainly there was nothing
comparable with the disasters of the ‘90s; during the war they naturally throve
with soaring prices. Equally, they
suffered during the violent slump of 1921, when a considerable number were
ruined. Cattle feeders for instance in
one season saw the value of their stocks sink by something like £10 per head.
The price of dairy cattle must have fallen 30% or 40%. Farming for the Cheshire
County Council that year, I contrived to lose the ratepayers £10,000, mainly in
the written down value of stock. The latter part of the 20’s was again a period
of acute depression, and in 1930 every acre of wheat grown in the country must
have been marketed at a loss. Neglecting for the moment the temporary effects
of the war, the influence of these changes on the farming methods of the
country was this. Arable land was reduced, the area under grass was
increased. There was a general trend
towards purchase of the foods needed instead of producing them at home. Farming
became two a considerable extent a matter of processing, for as in the 90’s,
animal production was up on the whole more profitable than arable. In a sense
dog ate dog. The keepers of cattle benefited from the misfortunes of the corn
growers. The relative profitability of different types of farming stood out
fairly clear. Milk was the sound stable product, for in this business the
Farmer could benefit from cheap imports of food while his product was naturally
protected. The only real competition he
had to fear was that of his neighbour. The beef feeders were not so well
placed; frozen beef had for long years been something of a competitor, but
frozen beef was poor stuff in comparison with home-killed. Mutton production
also suffered from serious competition, New Zealand in this case being the main
competitor.
Now it was very evident that there must be some limit to
the extent to which the country could safely allow its agriculture to
degenerate. It was all very well to argue that cheap food was an aid to
trade in that it cheapened the cost of producing manufactured articles, but if
by this means our whole countryside became derelict or fell to the level of a
mere ranch, we should be risking disaster in war. Furthermore, we should not
even maintain our native skill in cultivation. After long consideration the
Government decided to found a beet industry. The experience of all European
countries had shown that beet could not be established in competition with sugar
cane except by subsidy and in 1924 the Government took the unprecedented step
in granting, a subsidy (actually on the sugar itself, not on the beet), in order
to found a beet industry. A number of factories
for sugar extraction were erected, mainly in the eastern counties. From that date onwards sugar beet became a
feature in arable farming of the country.
Farmers are a very dispersed body and do not regularly combine
for any purpose. Trade Unionism grew slowly amongst them. Whilst there were
many local associations, it was not until 1908 that steps were taken to found a
national body. A National Farmers’ Union then came into existence though it was
many years before its branches covered the whole country and even after the war
they had by no means secured the adherence of all members of the farming community.
In some senses depression may be said to have benefited
the industry, since the declining prices of the 20’ s undoubtedly helped to
bring together the whole body of farmers within the orbit of the Union.
At this point it would be well to describe the effects of
the war on our farming. We made a late start, not indeed until 1916 was any serious
effort made to stimulate agricultural production. A Food Production Department
was then set up as an off-shoot of the Ministry of Agriculture and under this Department
campaign for increase of production was instituted. The main problem was ploughing
grassland. It necessary first of all to
convince the farming public that more ploughing would have to be done and it
was by no means an easy matter to prove that plough-land was more productive
than grassland, though the essential facts were a matter of simple calculation
and the evidence from Scotland where the plough policy had been maintained was simply
overwhelming. The submarine, however, achieved what individual argument could
not. We came very near to starvation in
1917, the Food Product ion Department set up County Committees at first as an
off-shoot of County Councils, but later direct agents of the Government,
charging them with responsibility for increasing the area of ploughland in the
country and in particular for increasing the wheat acreage. They were endowed with
increasing powers as time went on and by the end of the war were authorised
even to dispose of bad farmers; their powers were, however, never fully expanded
and for the most part they proceeded by persuasion. A new factor now came into farming in the shape
of the tractor.
Tractors had indeed been developed simultaneously with
motor cars. But very few were employed
in farming up to the outbreak of war. During the war, however, a good many were
imported, and a tractor industry in England was founded. After long argument
the principle of guaranteed minimum prices for wheat and certain other products was introduced.
The whole effort came suddenly to an end when the war
finished. In the financial difficulties
of 1921, the whole structure of guaranteed prices was swept away and a lump sum
was paid over to farmers in respect of their wheat and oats by way of a quit (sic) pro
quo. It was a violent reversal of policy, sudden and unapprehended, entirely in
keeping with that erratic genius Lloyd George, and it had rather important
psychological effects for it left the whole farming community with the idea
that whatever their promises, no Government was prepared to ensure their well-being.
The war brought of course some increase in the area of ploughland but its major
effects can be summarised under three heads: first a revival of a very old
controversy as to the relative productivity of ploughland and grassland, secondly,
the introduction of the tractor and thirdly a confirmation of the long existing
cynical attitude of farmers toward Government action.
Looking back, it is clear that a major event of the three
decades was the passing of the Development Act: for this brought into being Research
Institutes and made possible the organisation of an educational and advisory
system throughout war. From that date onwards, one can observe the influence of
three major factors in shaping agricultural technique. There was first organized
research and propaganda and secondarily the work conducted by all the larger
trading firms concerned with farming.
Thirdly, there was the influence of pioneer farmers. There have, of course,
always been men of this type, by far the most outstanding in our history being Bakewell,
Lord Townsend in the 18th century was another, Coke of Holkham in the early
19th century was another. Naturally they were limited by the profitability f
farming in their day. Low prices don’t encourage enterprise but there were some
even in the darkest days who demonstrated the ability of the human spirit to
rise above adversities. In the depression of the 90’s there was Robert Elliot of
Clifton Park - who tackled the problem of laying down land to grass in a very
original way. There were men who foresaw the possibilities of modern fruit growing.
There were men who divined that tomatoes would become a stable form of diet
(the taste for tomatoes is quite modern, in my youth they were put upon the
table hesitatingly and enquiringly). Yes, they are an acquired taste, aren’t
they? On the whole, we have fared well in respect of pioneers in the 20th
century. They appeared in considerable numbers after world war 1. There was
Hosier for instance who revolutionised our ideas about how to keep dairy cattle.
He had seen dairy cattle milked on the pastures in New Zealand and devised a
system suitable for this country of gathering them twice a day in the coils and
putting them through a movable shed or bale containing milking machines and so
on. These three great forces organised education, trailers and pioneers acted and
reacted upon one another and all the technical developments of the period can
be traced to one or other of them. Even collectively, however, they did not
profoundly increase the gross production of the country. Comprehensive reports
on the productivity in 1908 and again in 1925 show the following figures:
The Development Commissioners took a long view over
research. It was by this time clear that educational effort would fall under three heads: universities and colleges,
research, and “county” or secondary education.
Clearly the key to the whole programme lay in the universities
not only as prime providers of information but as training centres for researchers.
We were grievously short of trained scientific men at the time, and obviously
there could be no research institutes without highly trained researchers. It
was equally clear that if the stream of information to be expected from the research
centres was to reach the farmers of the country quickly there would have to be
an advisory service of some kind and the advisory service would call for two types
of worker, namely specialists in various scientific fields, plant pathology,
soil chemistry and so forth, and fieldsmen with a wide general knowledge of practical
farming contacts. The funds now made available were sufficient to found all of
these lines of work though it was a good many years before the research institutes
all came into being, and the war sadly hampered progress. It was a good many
years too before the County Education Authorities responded to the call for
county education for it was, of course, a permissive service.
Research was fostered by several different methods, in
some cases, e.g. chemistry, there was already an active University agricultural
department, and here the Development Commission provided funds for special
research department of the university leaving it to the university to develop
them. There were other cases in which it was thought advisable merely to support
existing foundations, of these Rothamsted was by far the most notable. There
were yet other instances in which completely new research institutes were
founded.
In the breeding of plants and animals a new world had
opened up by the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’ s famous researches into the breeding
of peas. Gregor Mendel was the abbot of a monastery and. for many years he carried
out fundamental researches into the theory of heredity. His work was published in an obscure journal and remained unnoticed for more than fifty
years. At the turn of the century three scientific workers simultaneously
arrived at conclusions similar to Mendel’s and Mendel’s papers were unearthed. His conclusions were revolutionary, but like
most great discoveries simple. In his view every organism was made up of an
infinitely large number of unit characters which he called factors and it was useless
to study inheritance of the organisms as a whole since the characters were handed
on from generation to generation independently. Moreover, inheritance of individual
characters was determined by a very simple
mathematical law. It looked as though all the breeder had to do was to discover
which were unit characters, he could then breed with absolute certainty.
Clearly this was a discovery rivaling in importance Darwin’ s theory of
evolution. Once Mendel’s papers had reached research journals his work was
taken up all over the world.
It soon became evident that the results with peas could
be repeated with an endless variety of plants and in certain instances the
principles held good with animals. But
equally it became clear that the arithmetical rules were often far more complicated
than in the simple case of peas with which Mendel had worked. Advances in study
of the microscopic character of the living cell laid bare the physical
foundation of the hereditary mechanism. For the composition of the chromosomes
in the nucleus of the cell and the changes which went on in the formation and
union of the gametes clearly fitted Mendel’s unit character theory. Practical development
of Mendel’s work was taken up first at Cambridge University and it was not long
before Biffen had demonstrated a whole host of characters in wheat which
behaved on Mendelian principles and he was very soon able to produce a wheat which
resisted rust, another which combined the character of strength from Canadian
and the yielding capability of English sorts.
As the number recognizable unit characters grows it became possible to
enlarge the scope of plant breeding almost indefinitely. It is possible to
graft characters belonging to wild plants on to cultivated species and thereby
virtually to create a new type of organism. Immunity to disease has frequently
been grafted on to cultivated species in this way, half the earth has been
searched for wild species of potatoes likely to possess characters which could
be woven into the make-up of cultivated strains. We already have for instance a
potato which will withstand the dreaded Blight. A whole stream of new and
improved varieties of most cultivated plants has been coming from the Plant
Breeding Stations during the past thirty years.
Animal breeding has proved more difficult. The animal is
a much complex organism. It is much more difficult to separate the effect of
heredity from that of environment than in the case of the plant. Much of the improved performance of modern animals
is due simply to the fact that they are better fed. They are extremely slow in reproduction. A single poppy plant produces many thousands of
seeds, a cow reproduces itself but once per annum. All the larger animals are very
costly to work with. Finally, an animal cannot be self-fertilised in the same
way as a plant. It is therefore much more difficult to analyse its hereditary make-up.
For all these reasons research in animal breeding, was for many years confined to
the smaller animals, rats, mice and fowls. As a matter of fact the animal which has
yielded by far the most impotent results in breeding experiments is the fruit
fly which can be hardly dignified by the name of domestic animal. Research Institutes
for breeding of poultry were set up at Cambridge and Edinburgh. Quite early the Cambridge work yielded the
spectacular discovery of sex-linkage (which incidentally confirmed the chromosome
theory in inheritance. It was noted that certain colour characters were inherited
along with sex and it became possible therefore to select breeds for mating which
would throw progeny whose sex was discoverable at birth by plumage colour. Ultimately, virtually pure lines of auto-sexing
breeds were created.
Again, working on similar lines, (Greenwood at Edinburgh
was able to analyse the characters whereby fecundity could be determined. But practically
all work on animal breeding tends to show that utility characters such as early
maturity, fecundity, milking capacity, are not unit characters, they are
resultant of the coming together of a number of characters, perhaps a very
large number of characters. In some cases they appear to be additive. Breeding for utility characters is therefore
a very complex matter. Mendel’s theory cannot be directly utilised, all one can
do is argue from a Mendelian bases.
Britain has for centuries been famed as a centre for
stock-breeding. Our pedigree blood has
gone out pretty well all over the world. All our breeds have been formed by inbreeding
and selection. Now more recent work has
tended to show that cross bred animals tend to grow faster than pure bred. Hence, although we still worship at the shrine
of pedigree we have to admit that the best utility results are sometimes
obtained by breaking down the purity of the blood line. We have, however, a useful export trade in
pedigree stock which brings us in an income of a million or more per annum, partly
from race horses.
An element of centralized organization and of State
control entered into breeding practice with the institution of a licensing
system for stallions and a scheme for the provision of premium bulls for use in
dairy herd. These schemes brought into being the nucleus of a State livestock
service. It remained a modest undertaking until in the 20’s licensing of bulls
was introduced.
The record of research with milk takes a very different
line. Breeding for milk has indeed been encouraged by the formation of milk
recording societies grant aided by the Ministry. For a long time societies were autonomous
bodies merely acting under the general guidance of the Ministry. In recent times responsibility for recording had
been taken over by the Milk Marketing Boards.
Control of quality in milk has been regulated by a Food and Drugs Act
operated by County Councils. The need for research in bacteriological quality
rose partly from the demands of traders for information on means of avoiding
waste, partly owing to pressure from the Health Authorities concerned with
consumers’ welfare. Pure milk became the main line of work in the National
Institute for Research in Dairying when this was set up. It called for a lowly
kind of research for after all everybody new that pure milk kept better than
dirty milk, but there were hosts of problems and ways and means to be
investigated and a new attitude of mind had to be created. In this work the
Research Institute of the County Councils showed a notable degree of co-operation.
Research in animal health was promoted mainly through the
veterinary colleges, though in this instance, the industry itself set up a
Department which acted simultaneously as a research department and as a
controlling centre for a network of animal disease officers. The latter service
is engaged mainly in controlling seven or eight contagious diseases listed
under the Contagious Diseases of Animals Act. Control is based on compulsory
notification by owners when cases of disease occur on their farm (it is no
defence in English law for a farmer to plead that he doesn’t know: Glanders or
swine fever, anthrax or foot and mouth). Tuberculosis in cattle, though not
listed under the Contagious Diseases Act, has engaged the active attention of
research departments and of veterinary field staff for many years. Shortly after the war, two schemes were
launched having as their object the elimination of this disease from dairy
herds. The first of these schemes known
as the Designated Milks Order was a typical piece of permissive
legislation. It merely laid down
conditions under which milk could be sold as tuberculin tested. These conditions included testing of the
herd, elimination of all reactors and certain special precautions in production
of milk. A few years later the Ministry
launched the Attested Herds Scheme which aimed at virtual elimination of
tuberculosis from any herd but took no account of the milk produced. In some degree the two schemes overlapped:
both schemes invited farmers to incur costs in management of their herds and to
find recompense in sales of milk at special prices and in the improved health
of their herds before either Schemes could achieve much success it was
necessary to create a premium market for Tuberculin Treated milk but this task
fell largely to the pioneer farmers that sell.
Precautions against plant diseases are somewhat similar
though much less costly. An Act known as
the Destructive Insects and Pests Act was passed in the 90’s. This also required notification of certain
diseases of plants and a few destructive insects, the chief of which is the
Colorado Beetle. With one or two
exceptions of which the colorado beetle is the chief, this Act is of little
more than academic interest. There is,
however, a disease of potatoes known as Black Scab or Wart Disease in which the
Order has proved of importance. Research
centres for study of plant diseases were founded about the same time as all
other research institutes and plant pathology has of course for more than a 10
years been a subject of research in universities. The bulk of our diseases are
caused by fungi and bacteria, many of which have extremely complicated life
histories and the unravelling of these has been a fruitful field of research
for a long time. Wart disease is caused
by a fungus. In the early years of the
century it was discovered that certain varieties of potatoes suffered very
badly from this disease, others less so, while some are absolutely immune from
attack, precisely why no one has yet discovered. Once this fact had become established, orders
were made prohibiting non-immune varieties on infected land. A research centre was set up to test out all
know varieties to determine which were in fact immune. At this centre it was soon discovered that
many varieties were synonymous and that most varieties in commerce were in some
degree mixed. It became important
therefore to devise machinery for certification of stock. Difficult as this task may seem to a layman
(for all potatoes look very much alike), it has in fact proved quite easy to
train a succession of young people, commonly students in universities, to
examine all potato fields in the country from which seed is sown and on the
basis of their reports to issue certificates of purity, and from this much
follows. There are many troubles of
potatoes other than wart disease. It has
long been known that some of these troubles are much less common in Scotland
than in England. A trade in Scottish
seed is therefore longstanding. The
explanation of this peculiar virtue of Scottish seed had to await the discovery
of viruses. Plant pathologists have long
been aware that certain degenerate types of disease could not be ascribed to
any know organism, yet the evidence for the existence of some active principle
capable of reproducing itself and spreading from plant to plant after the
fashion of bacteria was well known. For
a long time these diseases had to be studied by inference rather than by direct
observation for it was only with the coming of the election (sic) microscope in
the 20’s that the causative agent could be seen. Even now the precise nature of this event
which has for long answered to the name of virus is a matter of
speculation. The virus appear to occupy
a place about half way between the living and the dead, possibly they are the
connecting link. Now the superiority of Scottish
seed turned out to be explicable on simple ground. In England most potatoes suffered to a
greater of lesser extent from two virus diseases, one causing a mottling of the
leaf, the other the curious growth in the leaf and both reducing yield
considerably. The viruses causing the
troubles are spread by aphids. The
aphids in question rarely occur in Scotland hence Scottish seed is not infected
while English seed usually is. In order to remove what chance of infection
there might be, the certification system devised for wart disease was extended
to cover virus disease also. But although
seed potatoes are the best known of the virus cases, the principles applied to
potatoes have been applied to many other plants vegetated. Thus, black currants, raspberries,
strawberries all suffer from virus troubles which give rise to degenerate plants. The secret of health maintenance consists of
raising stock in isolation in areas not subject to the agent (it is usually an
aphis). In all cases careful check and
certification of the stock plants is essential.
Machinery is basically an industrial rather than a farm
problem. Ever since the industrial revolution
manufacture of farm machinery has been an important industry, but it was
entirely in the hands of private firms and their future hung largely on the
prosperity of arable cultivation.
Machinery design was not therefore rapidly advancing. In order to promote advance, an Institute for
Research in Agricultural Engineering was set up in Oxford. Their early work was concerned in part with
study of basic principles and in part design of entirely new machines. They were for instance primarily responsible
for the development of machines for drying grass and they took steps to actively
develop machines for cutting drain trenches.
The main centre for research on soil problems and plant
nutrition remained at Rothamsted and their work expanded greatly when after the
war greater funds became available.
While in the main they continued to study the basic problems of crop
nutrition which Lawes and Gilbert opened up, and their experimentation spread
out on to many farms concentrated throughout the country, new lines of work opened
up in the laboratory discoveries. Studies
on the rotting of cellulose led to the design of schemes for manufacture of a
sort of artificial farmyard manure by rotting down of straw. Studies on bacteriology led to inoculation of
seeds of clover and in particular of Lucerne making possible the cultivation of
this valuable crop over years where hitherto it had failed. Investigations into bacterial members in the
soil threw a flood of light on the general bacteriology of the soil. It was
found that there were predatory organisms in particular protozoa and these
could easily be controlled by sterilisation.
For a time it appeared that a new
approach to nutrition was being made.
The practical difficulties in the way are however enormous and apart
from soil sterilisation have remained an academic matter.
Note from the transcriber
I'd like to thank Wilfred Bernard Mercer's family for donating the typed original copy of this talk to the archivist at Reaseheath College. Please email me wjpearson@gmail.com if you spot any errors.
I've added some pictures to illustrate this article - thanks to the archivist at Reaseheath for providing these.
I'll try and add the first part of this lecture when I get time.
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