The 1960s was an important time for mechanisation on the farm. How could the state of mechanisation be described? What was there to look forward to?
An article published in the Fife Free Press on 26 May 1962 carried a story of a talk from Mr Gavin Reekie, Cupar, who spoke to the Rotary Club of Kirkcaldy about farm mechanisation. It is an insightful piece about developments, the state of mechanisation and looking forward to the future. You might recognise some of the developments that Mr Reekie predicted would be adopted. The article is quoted at length:
“Mechanical farm of the future
Talk to rotarians
The farm of the future was visualised by Mr Gavin Reekie, Cupar, a well-known agricultural engineer when he spoke at yesterday’s meeting of the Rotary Club of Kirkcaldy.
To begin with, Mr Reekie spoke of the revolution which had occurred in the farming industry over the last twenty years. It had been brought about by rural workers coming increasingly more often into contact with the town and city worker, by better transport facilities being available, and, latterly, by the ownership of cars. This contact by the rural worker brought home to them the fact that industry was providing better conditions of employment and a higher standard of living because of mechanisation and the drift to the towns started. This had forced the farming industry to take the ache out of back-ache and to mechanise in order to retain labour.
Mr Reekie said that in this period one could fairly point to the late Harry Ferguson who pioneered the introduction of mounted implements actually mounted and hydraulically controlled on the tractor, to what was termed today as the “three point hydraulic linkage.”
Since that time, continual improvements had been made in traction design and to implement design. There had been recent changes in grass conservation and since grass was now considered a major crop, more progress would be made there.
Potato harvesting machinery had been made considerable progress and soon, probably machines would do all the harvesting work without the need of school children.
“I am not against the use of school children gathering potatoes”, said Mr Reekie. “I personally feel that this sort of work tends to harden youth to the rigours of life that lie ahead. We have famous schools providing toughening processes for which they receive high fees, but here we have young people going out to gather potatoes and they are being paid for getting tough.”
Speaking of the future, Mr Reekie suggested that just as in the past the impetus for the revolution had come from mechanisation, so in the days that lay ahead would it come from the Common Market.
Stock feeding, he forecast, would be on the push button system and instead of silage he suggested the compressing of grass into small cakes which would be stored in bins thereafter fed into the cattle troughs.
Of the potato crop, he said there had been some advance in handling and the future would appear to lie in potatoes being stored at the farm in boxes of at least one ton capacity. Considerable progress had been made in the presentation of potatoes to the public and the accelerated freezing process, if the processing were justified should appeal to the housewife. Mr Reekie also forecast air conditioned tractor cabs and the cutting out of the gearbox by the use of hydraulics, a form of in-built irrigation with a switch-on under the control of a moisture metre.
“I suggest”, he said, “that a premium has always been placed on new thinking which can be converted into new methods whereby the individual tries to do the best job he can in his career. Competition is therefore essential for the well-being of our nation and it is this spirit of competition and adventure which will make this nation a most powerful partner in the Common Market.”
