The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1938. MENACE OF RAGWORT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 3, 5 January 1938, Page 6

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1938. MENACE OF RAGWORT.

For the cause that tacka assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

This is the time of the year when public 'attention should again be drawn to the menace of ragwort, for the weed is at present flowering and soon will seed. People who have recently returned from motor tours all over the North Island bring again the report which over the past few years has become monotonous in its regularity, that "the country is yellow with the weed." Concern at its spread has been expressed by farmers' organisations from one end of the country to the other, while, speaking in the House of Representatives a few months ago, the Minister of Labour described ragwort in Southland and Otago as "marching north like an invading army." It is not, then, that either the individual farmer or the Government is not fully alive to the menace. They are, but the point to emphasise is that still greater efforts should be made to eradicate what a member of the New Zealand Farmers' Union recently described sarcastically as the Dominion's "national flower." The time is past when ragwort can be prevented from spreading, let alone eradicated, by the sporadic efforts of the individual landholders. It has become a national matter, and the Government should realise its responsibilities by making its urgent greater efforts more co-ordinated. Much good work has been done by the Employment Promotion Fund and by the loeal bodies which assisted the farmer to pay the wages of the labour used to fight the pest. This, however, is not enough.

For the most part efforts to cope with the spread have been catting the weed or spraying with sodium chlorate. This latter method has been used by the men on the Government's schemes for providing work. Up to a point these moves have been efficacious, but up to a point only. At the best they have not been able to get tc the root of the trouble, the actual eradication of the weed. They have been aimed rather at control of any spread. Further, it has been impossible to work over a large enough area. It is obvious that land already in use should have received first attention, and that leaves little time for unused Crown land and native lands, the very areas which present the greatest menace. Some Crown land, to mention, for example, only one area, that on the Kaimai Hills, is ablaze with yellow, and from there the seeds spread. The nearby farmer who has just made some effort to clear his holding finds next spring that his efforts have been rendered useless. Some concerted effort should be made to clear at least those Crown and native acres which lie nearest to land in use.

Treatment of ragwort by hand, however thorough, is nevertheless not the best method. The best hope for the future lies in entomological research, for in this way the iweed may be eradicated and not merely controlled. Already Dr. D. Miller, of the Cawthron Institute, has liberated in the Auckland province a parasitical grub which attacks the seedhead and eats the seeds. This is a new line of attack, and if as successful as two recent similar experiments, those on the woolly aphis on the apple and the white butterfly, the great and growing menace of ragwort should in time disappear, and a great deal done towards helping primary production in the Dominion.