FarmED Books: Week 2

Fream’s Elements of Agriculture

D.H. Robinson, Ph.D & Neil F. McCann, B.Sc. (John Murray, 1977)

When I was attending agricultural college, this classic textbook, by the Royal Agricultural Society of England, was my major point of reference. First published in 1892, it’s obviously much older than me but has remained in print for nearly a hundred years, going through many revisions.

This fifteenth edition dates from 1977. I purchased my copy from the rather quaint mobile Landman’s Bookshop, which travelled from college to college.

Fream’s Elements of Agriculture was and in many ways still is, like an encyclopedia for agricultural students, containing everything you’d want to know about farming methods, production techniques, machinery and tools, plant species and livestock breeds. If you want to find out how drills work or how to use crop rotations, it’s all here.

The photographs are wonderful, embracing working horses and tractors and as such, it’s a wonderful historic record spanning the first half of the green revolution.

Ian Wilkinson, FarmED Founder