Power on the Land: The Story of the Mechanisation of British Farming (1940s)

[Music] the [Music] for centuries the patchwork pattern of Britain's Countryside has been shaped by the individual skill and labor of farmer and farm worker [Music] onto this background of generations of farming skill and Country law has been [Music] imposed the power of the machine the British farmer today is also a mechanic an engineer working on the lair to his inborn knowledge of soil and climate of crops and livestock he has had to add during the last 30 years a knowledge of gears and carburetors of sprockets and sparking plugs and just as farmers and their wives used to flock to horse fairs and cattle shows so today they come in crowds to demonstrations of of farm machinery to compare different types of ditching and trenching machines see new methods for cutting and carting grass to examine and discuss all the latest developments in the mechanization of the land agricultural engineering began in Britain 200 years ago and since that time the output per Farm labor unit has steadily risen until today it is higher than in any other European country even before the war the value of the British Farm Workers output was three times that of the German and twice that of the French Belgian or swiss worker in recent years Britain's home food production has reached new records largely because of the close cooperation between the farmer the agricultural engineer and the makers of farm machinery increased speed is the essence of mechanized farming one man with a machine can do as much as four or five men with horses in the same time the greater speed of the machine and the fact that it can combine two or three operations in one means that the mechanized farmer is far less dependent upon the weather and that's very important in Britain's changeable climate this cuton lift machine for instance cuts grass and loads it onto a wagon in one operation a filled wagon can then be taken straight to the dryer or [Music] Silo the wise use of machine power on the land means more intensive production per acre and does not mean any decrease in the number of workers employed with this transplanting machine young vegetable plants can be put in at the rate of 8,000 or more an hour under favorable [Music] conditions finally the machine never tires and its greater power makes possible the farming of lands which could not formerly be cultivated the first step in all farming operations is the tilling of the soil and the first step in the mechanization of the land was the replacement of the Horse by the tractor for drawing plows and cultivators a four Farrow trctor Dawn plow can plow up 8 Acres a day eight times as much as used to be possible with the old horsedrawn single Farrow plow then huge tractor drawn Harrows break up the soil and prepare the seed bed with a speed and power of 30 horses and when the seed bed is ready great tractor drawn drills sew the seed 26 rows at a time or with tractor drawn transplanters seed potatoes and young vegetables can be set out in the comfort and ease of a ride in a bath chair time and the back aing fatigue of the old hand planting methods are saved and labor released for other jobs about the farm with this machine all the crew have to do is to drop the plants in at regular intervals the transplanter does the rest it makes the drill as it moves across the field and then a pair of wheels at the back press down the soil around the roots of the plants after they have been dropped into the drill the machines used on British Farms have not all been designed and produced in the country's great engineering workshops many of them are the result of the Ingenuity and invention of ordinary working Farmers a cambridg a farmer faced with the problem of bringing water from a spring across 2 and 1 half miles of fields adapted an old mole drainer to lay the pipes underground in lengths of 600 ft at a time time this pneumatic hoe which hes between the plants as well as along the rows was designed and built by a west of England farmer but it takes care in some practice to be sure of cutting between the plants and not through them another working farmer has invented this handy ditcher good drainage is a vital factor in British farming without it arable land would not be fully productive and much of the best posture land would quickly become useless [Music] B but it is not only only in the realm of aable farming that Machinery assists the farmer nowadays the time and labor involved in the twice daily routine of milking large herds has been greatly reduced by taking special equipment to the cows in the [Music] pastures British dairy cows are among the highest milk producers in the world and the mechanization of dairy routine has resulted in an all round Improvement in the quality and cleanliness of this the most vital of all farm [Music] products the war has demanded an enormous increase in Britain's home food production and this has meant not only the more intensive cultivation of old farmlands but also the Reclamation of large areas of forly unproductive country hundreds of thousands of Acres of Morland and marshes of forests and hillsides have been cleared and plowed up and planted with food crops for the first time a great achievement in which machine power has played an essential part [Music] the [Music] w [Music] [Applause] then after the ground has been cleared of trees and shrubs other machines come along to break up the soil and prepare it for planting the crops [Music] n [Music] the result of all this work and effort of this combination of farming LW and Engineering skill is to be seen in the yield and quality of the crops at Harvest Time and at this season too machines are at hand to help the f armor Gather in the [Music] gray not so long ago all the corn had to be cut and harvested by hand five Men Mo all day could cut about 3 acres between Dawn and dust then came the reaper binder which revolutionized harvesting Methods at the end of the 19th century this machine cuts the corn and ties it into sheaves in one operation but even with this method the sheaves have to be set up into stooks to dry it is said that wheat should hear the church bells ring twice before being carted and made up into a stack where it has to dry still further before being threshed more recently still the self-propelled combine harvester has been introduced in which all these operations are done at the same time and it takes only one man to work it the 12T cutting bar cuts the corn and lays it onto a moving belt which carries it into the machine where it is threshed threshed straw pours out onto the the ground behind while the grain is collected in a hopper at the side of the machine lorries driving along beside the Harvesters offload the grain without interrupting the cutting and take it away to be dried and sacked and behind the combines come bailing machines which pick up the straw and compress it into BS [Music] nearly all British farmers are mixed farmers who combine stock keeping with crop growing and straw is Val valuable byproduct for Powter litter and thatch thus the whole process from The Cutting and thrashing of the Corn the final bailing and stacking of the straw takes place in one continuous [Music] operation never has Britain's soil been more productive than it is today hundreds of thousands of idle Acres have been brought into cultivation while old farmlands are yielding more than ever they did as a direct result of the close partnership between farmer machine maker and agricultural engineer British farming is today more highly organized more efficient and more mechanized than ever before in its history history [Music]