Abstract
SO long as farming was a cycle of routine operations conducted at what we should now call a low-level production, there was little need for any technical knowledge beyond that derived from a thorough farm training in the local husbandry. When the production of crops and stock came under scientific examination rather more than a century ago, the clearer understanding of the principles involved in farming operations began to make technical advances possible. Some of them, such as the introduction of artificial fertilizers, were advances of the first magnitude, and presented completely new possibilities to the farming community. There then developed a need which has lost none of its urgency in spite of all the efforts made to meet it: How are we to bridge the gap between the laboratory and the field, between the man of science who provides the key to improved methods of production, and the farmer whose business it is to put them into successful operation? In the early years this task fell to the few agricultural societies with their old-established journals, the research stations being represented only by Rotham-sted, and the colleges only by the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester. Gradually the organization of agricultural research and education was built up into the form we know to-day. This organization has done
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SCIENCE AND PRACTICE IN AGRICULTURE. Nature 149, 722–723 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149722a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149722a0