"YELLOW PERIL"

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 27, 1 February 1934, Page 11

"YELLOW PERIL"

RAGWORT IN WAIKATO.

LORD BLEDISLOE'S AID SOUGHT. • PUBLIC MEETING'S RESOLVE, (From Our Own Correspondent.) PUTARURU, Wednesday. With a view to enlisting the sympathy of the Governor-General, Lord Bledialoe, for Waikato farmers whose land is infested with ragwort, a representative meeting of Putaruru business men and farmers decided t'o invito his Excellency to visit Putaruru. The chairman, Mr. G. V. Pearce, president of the Putaruru Chamber of Commerce, which had convened the meeting, said that Lord- Bledisloe might bo willing to break his journey to Rotorua at Putaruru. "The GovernorGeneral is an experienced farmer," said Mr. Pearce, "and I think we should show him a few properties on the Lichfield road. We might obtain his support. I feel sure that, as a farmer, he would be only too pleased to meet the' farmers. It is probable that he has never seen ragwort as it grows at Putaruru." The meeting, which was representative of the Matamata County Council, Putaruru Town Boa I'd, Putaruru Chamber of Commerce and Putaruru branch of the Farmers' Union, decided to write to the Minister of Agriculture and to circularise local bodies in the following terms: "This nieeting urges the necessity of legislation being passed at the next session of Parliament conferring on local bodies the power to deal with ragwort, and also extending existing powers of control so as to render them effective." Support was also accorded a draft bill regarding ragwort control which is to bo considered at a forthcoming conference of local bodies at Hamilton. Menace to Farm Land. Mr. A. H. Dukeson, senior, a farmer of many years' experience at Putaruru. declared that if nothing were done to check the spread of ragwort, there would be practically no farming done in the district within a few years. He mentioned the case of a farmer who milked 25 cows a few seasons ago. Ragwort had overrun the property and his cows died. He was not milking any at present. Mr. K. S. Cox, a member of the Matamata County Council, said other parts of the country were just as bad as Putaruru, notably the Kaimai hills between Matamata and Tauranga. One settler at Karapiro, near Cambridge had spent £115 on sodium chlorate to clean the ragwort from his 102-acre farm. That did not include the cost of labour. Others speakers declared that if things were allowed to drift the effect of farms going out of production because of the spread of ragwort would mean that some shops_ in Putaruru would have to close their doors. Mr. A. L. Mason, a Putaruru solicitor, addressed the meeting and stated that the control of ragwort should be vested in local bodies. Government inspectors of noxious weeds, he declared, had a hundred and one duties to perform, and it was hopeless to expect assistance from them. "They have their hands tied by the Noxious Weeds Act," he declared. "This gives them no powers whatever, so there is no power to make a settler clear his regwort." Proposed Legislation. About 12 months ago Mr. Mason drafted a "ragwort bill," and it was approved by the Matamata County Council and the Putaruru Chamber of Commerce and Farmers' Union, and later submitted to the conference of Waikato organisations at Hamilton. This bill had been modelled on the lines of the Rabbit Nuisance Act, and gave drastic powers to inspectors,_ and control measures for the eradication of ragwort to local bodies. Unfortunately, onlv seven out of the 2/ Waikato organisations, which had promised support for the bill, were represented at the conference, and four of seven would not support the proposals in full. This killed the bill. Recently, however, the Taranaki provincial Farmers' Union obtained from Mr. Mason a copy of his draft bill. The skeleton of the 'bill now being put forward by the Taranaki Farmers' Union, lie said, had been taken from his proposals, but there were additional provisions that when local bodies take over control of ragwort the Department of Agriculture will pay them sueli money as it is now spending on ragwort destruction; and furthermore that Crown Lands shall be liable for a special rate levied by local bodies for ragwort eradicator. These additions, said Mr. Mason, should be acceptable to critics of the Putaruru draft bill, who contended that provision would have to be made for clearing ragwort from Crown Land which now is a seed bed for the weed.