The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-12-14 00:00:00

LARGE AND SMALL FARMS.

The c mcluding meeting of the Farmers' Club for the
present year wa held in London on Mundy evening,
at the Sslishury Hotel, Salisbury square, Mr. Chefflus,
Easton Manor, Dunniow. in the chair. The attend-
ance was, as usual in, the Smithfield week, very large.
Mr. H. M. Jenkins, Secretary uf the Royal
Agricultural Society, introduced, in an able paper,
the question appointed for consideration, viz. :
"Some coniporative results of large and small
farm systems in providing food for the people.'
lie commenced with aa elaborate examination
of the quantity of staple food per head, especially
corn and meat, required for consumption by the
population of the United Kingdom, connecting with
this an estimate of the amount of food consumed by
horses necessarily largely employed in the cultivation of
small farms. The food consumed by horses was, he said,
on the average, eight times as much as that consumed
by man. Two-thirds of the land of England, he re-
marked, is under grass and green crors ; and of the
meat commmed in this country during last year 77.1
per cent, was of home growth, 12.8 per cent, was
imported from Ireland, 5 per cent, was imported
from abroad, and another 5 per cent, consisted of
imported provisions. The treatment of the sub-
ject in the paper was so essentially statistical as
not to admit of being summarised. It also em-
braced an allusion to Belgium as a country of small
farms, and Mr. Jenkins observed that whatever might
be the case as regarded comparative productiveness, it
would be well it England resembled Belgium in the
avoidance of waste. The consumption of meat in that
country he estimated at 431bs. per head against 95Ibs.
in England, adding that the importe and exports of
food balanced each other. Holland was similarly
made an object of comparison, with a similar result
as regards imports and exports. The position of France
was also considered, and it was remarked that there
15,000,000 of acres are annually in fallow in that coun-
try, and that the total population connected with
agriculture is 7,330,000, while the country could
not be regarded as much more than self-supporting
in an agricultural point of view. In conclusion, Mr.
Jenkins indicated a general preference for the large
over the small farm system. The Belgian system
could not, he thought, be considered the best, because
it was so expensive in the men, if not in the money,
required to work it; but, on the other hand, he held
that England had mush to learn from Belgium with
regent to farming. On the whole it might be affirmed
that English farmers need not be ashamed of a fair
comparison of their achievements with those of their
neighbours, notwithstanding the want of tenant
right and protection for the capital invested by them
in the soil.
An interesting discussion followed, in the course of
which Mr. C. S. Read, M.P , deprecated the aggre-
gation of small holdings into large ones, on the ground
that they were of great use by affording an opening
for deserving and energetic men, and referred to in-
stances of that kind in his own country; while Mr.
Wren Hoskyns, M.P., took a similar view, and ob-
served that climate and other circumstances deter-
mined to a gnat extent the size of farms in different
parts of the country. The question was deemed so
important that the discussion was ultimately ad-
journed.