FLAX-GROWING.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 293, 18 September 1940, Page 4

FLAX-GROWING.

PRODUCT FOR PLANE FABRIC. INDUCEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN. The Avar, greatly increasing the demand for flax for aircraft fabric and other uses, has stimulated the movcment for producing more of this essential material in Great Britain, says a writer in the “Weekly Scotsman,” a copy of Avhich has been received by an Ashburton resident. The Government, promptly beginning to make large purchases elsoAvhere abroad, offered inducements to British and Ulster farmers to extend their acreage. The result so far is that there are about 16,000 acres in Great Britain, and 50,000 acres in Northern Ireland under cultivation.

Flax-groAving steadily declined after the middle of the last century till the only considerable crop Avas produced in Ireland. Tho chief source Avas Russia, supplying three-quarters of the Avorld’s total. During the last Avar foreign flax cost £1.400 a ton, Avhile the price of homo-groAvn Avas fixed at £.360 a ton, compared with a normal £SB. After tho war Britain became almost solely dependent on Russia, importing from the Baltic ports more than 90 per cent, of her requirements.

A Serious Handicap. This proved a serious handicap, for Russian supplies dropped to about a third of the pre-Avar amount, and linen prices climbed to a high level. The Empire Flax-groAving Association made strenuous effort,? to increase supplies from British sources. The cost of our flax imports Avas something like doubling year bv year, and there was cause for alarm in our dependcncb on foreign material for the* manufacture of aircraft fabric.

Russian production rose, but so many factories were started by the Soviet for its use that the surplus for export still declined. Britain turned to Belgium for the bulk of her supplies, but the situation A\ r as very unsatisfactory, both on economic grounds and from the point of vieAv of national security. Germany’s crop increased by leaps and hounds and she bought heavily abroad. France paid a subsidy to growers, while Italy and other European countries Avere vigorously stimulating production. In Britain there ivere only 24,287 acres under flax in 1938, compared with 41,209 in 1914, though the processed product Avas selling at about double the price. Over 80 per cent, of the acreage was in Ulster, yet production there had fallen in that period by one third. In East Anglia, King George V. gave a lead oxx the Saxidx’iixgliam Estate. He had an experimental plot of three acres put down and it yielded 25 cxvt. of yarn from xvhich sheets, tablecloths and so on Avere AA'oven for the Royal household;.

Areas Extended. ■■ •• From this crop, pedigree seed was distributed over a wide area, and in Northamptonshire 600 acres were grown, land derelict save for the grazing of deer and sheep being brought under the plough, and last year 2000 acres wore grown in that locality. The peculiar toughness of the fibre, the writer goes on, enables it to be spun to remarkably fine yet strong thread. There is a record of an 80-year-old Irish woman spinning 130 miles of yarn from one pound of fibre. Not to speak of the finest cambric or the tapestries and embroideries for which linen cannot be surpassed, nothing to equal a doubledamask tablecloth can be made of cotton. In these days, however, it is as an essential material for war purposes, especially in aeroplane construction, that flax is vitally important.