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THE CULTIVATION OF FARMED LANDS.
47
farming given considerably increased quantities of this, the most important,
means of maintain the fertility of the land, but great care, too, has begun
to be paid to its storage and scientific employment. Chemical and
bacteriological investigations, together with very extensive series of experiments, have been
made for the purpose of throwing light on this question, and have succeeded in
arousing a more general interest among farmers for rational methods of manuring,
and a knowledge of the way in which the work should be carried out.
As regards tillage, too, a decided improvement is to be noted. The arable
land is ploughed more deeply, this giving the plant-roots access to a larger
food-supply area, and to a more equable store of moisture. There is also to be
noticed a more general endeavour to prevent the soil from losing its humidity, this
being done by the employment of suitable methods of treatment for
diminishing the surface evaporation, while, at the same time, the ascent of water towards
the surface from the subsoil is facilitated. Success in this direction has been
rendered possible by improved implements specially suited for the purpose, the rise
of a very flourishing home manufacture of agricultural implements (see p. 73)
having largely contributed to this end.
While agricultural technics have thus been improved, the arrangements adopted
for the cultivation of the various crops have been developed to a higher degree
of intensity. The old course of grain crops, in accordance with which the
fields were divided into 2—4 parts, one of which lay fallow while the others were
employed for the production of crops, was necessitated by the way in which
the land was formerly divided among the farmers, each field in a village
community being divided among all the landowners in the village (see pp. 28 foil.),
but by degrees, as the "Separate-re-partition" and the "Legal re-partition" systems
were carried into effect, the farmers began to employ a more productive system
of agriculture. As long as the cultivation of grain was the chief source of income
for the farmer, the great bulk of the farmers of the country were slow to adopt
a more intensive course of crops, and even as låte as the sixties, when annual
statistics began to be drawn up, two-course or three-course rotations were
predominant, the former in the provinces around Lake Mälaren, the latter in
Götaland. But when greater importance began to be attached to cattle-farming,
necessitating the cultivation of fodder on the farmer’s land, the transition to a
more intensive system became more general. The rotation ordinarily adopted
was that called "grain-ley rotation" (Sw. sädes-vallbruk), often called
"couple-rotation" (koppelbruk), extending over 7 years, in which the fallow-land, which
has been manured with farmyard-manure, is sown with autumn-seed, in which
grass is afterwards sown, which, after 3 years, is broken up to make way
for oats during 2 years. For several reasons, but especially in consequence of
the too long intervals between the manurings, and the small opportunity that is
given for a thorough labouring of the land, such a course yields too small crops
to satisfy the demands of the farmers of to-day, and, consequently, in places
where agriculture is carried to a high degree of perfection, has been changed to
a more complete variation of crops. The chief features of such regular rotation
of crops are: the cultivation each year of a different kind of crop — ripe grain,
green-fodder, root-crops — manuring, if possible, before each crop and in
accordance with its special requirements, and a frequently recurring thorough
labouring of the soil, together with measures for the arrest of the growth of
weeds. This development is specially shown by an increasing cultivation of root
crops, not only in consequence of the latter being able to yield greater
harvest-value than any other kind of plants cultivated in Sweden, but also because these
crops, in consequence of their demand for vigorous manuring, thorough
tillage, and the freeing of the land from weeds, necessitate a higher standard
of agriculture, thus occasioning better returns from other classes of crops, too.
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