Sir Robert Greig, formerly Secretary to the Department of Agriculture for Scotland, indulged in “a game of guesswork” in a broadcast talk from Edinburgh last night on what rural Scotland would be like 50 years hence.
He said: “Let us assume that some day, say 30 years hence, the public conscience will decide that a great and wealthy nation should not acquiesce in the semi-starvation and unhealthiness of a large part of its population if food will save them. Farming will have changed in many of its methods and changed in its organisation. It is unlikely our children will see many fields in stock. Most grain crops will be threshed and dried as they are cut. Hay-making in the fields may be a lost art, and no one who has forked hay through a summer day will regret it. The plough may survive here and there along with a few horses, but petrol, gas and electrical machinery will do most of the work on arable farms.”
• archive.scotsman.com