Rex Paterson
Encyclopedia
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(1902 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
– 1978 in Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
) was an English agricultural pioneer whose extensive business and meticulous record keeping enabled him to carry out research and development in dairy farming
Dairy farming
Dairy farming is a class of agricultural, or an animal husbandry, enterprise, for long-term production of milk, usually from dairy cows but also from goats and sheep, which may be either processed on-site or transported to a dairy factory for processing and eventual retail sale.Most dairy farms...
systems on a scale that would have been beyond most research institutions.
Biography
The son of a clergyman, he was educated at Christ's HospitalChrist's Hospital
Christ's Hospital is an English coeducational independent day and boarding school with Royal Charter located in the Sussex countryside just south of Horsham in Horsham District, West Sussex, England...
and spent only a short time at Wye College
Wye College
The College of St. Gregory and St. Martin at Wye, more commonly known as Wye College, was an educational institution in Kent, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1447 by John Kempe, the Archbishop of York, as a college for the training of priests. It is located in the small village of Wye, Kent, 60...
. He spent some time learning technical drawing in the office of his uncle Alliott Verdon Roe
Alliott Verdon Roe
Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon Roe OBE, FRAeS was a pioneer English pilot and aircraft manufacturer, and founder in 1910 of the Avro company...
, the aviation pioneer, before leaving to farm in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. The economic climate was not favourable and he returned to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, grateful that he could afford the fare.
He rented a farm in Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, where he depended considerably on rabbiting
Rabbiting
Rabbiting is the sport of hunting rabbits, often using ferrets or dogs to track the prey and various trapping and shooting methods to catch them....
to make a living. A move to the free-draining chalk downland of Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
enabled him to start milking cows using the system developed by Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
dairy farmer Arthur Hosier. The cows were kept out all year and milked in “bails”, or mobile milking parlours, which offered a very cheap way of starting up a dairy herd. Paterson started milking with a bail in 1928 (milking the cows himself) and built up a farming empire which came to include up to 10,000 acres (40 km²) (in 1943), and 4,000 dairy cows (in the early 1970s).
He became a well-known (if controversial) figure in British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
. His entrepreneurial drive and evident success, particularly in the 1930’s and 1940’s, contrasted strongly with the generally depressed state of British farming, and made him a source of inspiration to younger innovative farmers in the 1950’s and 1960’s. He showed that large scale farming, using modern technology, was both possible and profitable under British conditions.
He was appointed OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
in 1964 for services to agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
and in 1965 was awarded the Massey-Ferguson National Award for Services to United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
.
Labour management
Paterson took a different approach to the labour problems which had troubled other farmers. He did not set up large herds, typically his herds had 40-60 cows (this increased to around 80 in the 1960’s). This meant that the herd could be looked after by a single stockman, who was given considerable responsibility.In 1965 Paterson set out his principles for labour management:
- create the best possible working conditions;
- isolate the stockman and his unit, “so that he has the maximum opportunity to show his ability” and to “see how his results compare with others working under similar conditions”;
- “encourage an employee to accept as much responsibility as possible”
- “give the opportunity to increase earnings by bonus payments”;
- “give them the opportunity to act as if they were self-employed, and the freedom to use their own initiative within the framework of the general policy”.
Paterson was an innovator in the development of management systems and the organisation of
labour as well as in the use of technology. He offered his workers greater responsibility and motivated them by bonus payments, at a time when other farmers were trying to solve problems through stricter management control.
Management tools
Paterson invented a simple milk graph, in which a calculation of potential milk production, using a system he had developed from his study of herd results over the years, wascompared to actual production for each herd.
He also developed a system of measuring grass output which he called the Cow Day System.
Taskers-Paterson Buckrake
He was a pioneer in the making of silageSilage
Silage is fermented, high-moisture fodder that can be fed to ruminants or used as a biofuel feedstock for anaerobic digesters. It is fermented and stored in a process called ensiling or silaging, and is usually made from grass crops, including corn , sorghum or other cereals, using the entire...
in Britain and to enable this he designed the buckrake, which exploited the hydraulic three-point linkage invented by Harry Ferguson
Harry Ferguson
Henry George "Harry" Ferguson was an Irish engineer and inventor who is noted for his role in the development of the modern agricultural tractor, for becoming the first Irishman to build and fly his own aeroplane, and for developing the first four-wheel drive Formula One car, the Ferguson P99...
. This was manufactured by the firm of Taskers of Andover
Andover, Hampshire
Andover is a town in the English county of Hampshire. The town is on the River Anton some 18.5 miles west of the town of Basingstoke, 18.5 miles north-west of the city of Winchester and 25 miles north of the city of Southampton...
.