BREAKING IN

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 281, 28 November 1938, Page 6

BREAKING IN

Along the West Coast, from the Buller t to Jackson's Bay, there are large areas of ' idle lands which if brought under cultivation would add very considerably to the total I primary production of the Dominion, j Much of the land consists of what is 1 locally known as pakihi—barren, treeless • moorland with an undrained, sour soil » resting upon a coment-like gravel. Explosives have been used to break up the subsoil and bring some of these areas in, but the process is so slow and costly that I the bulk of the pakihi is still ns barren as [ when the pakeha came. Now the H<?n. P. C. Webb announces the intention of the Government to break in these and other areas by the use of modern machinery which ■ will clear up to four acres of ground a day. i These machines, which have already been well tested in the Gisborne and Oamaru districts, can be put to work like giant tanks on gorse and scrub-covered lands; when they have passed the land is ploughed by rotary discs to a depth of nearly four feet, the scrub is cut to pieces and buried, and the whole area left ready in the one operation for manuring and seeding. The carrying capacity of lands thus prepared is very great, and the use of the machines will add to the productive acreage of the Dominion at a rate not possiblo under ordinary methods, and at a time when there is urgent need for rapidly increasing our income from overseaa.