THE COUNTRY.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17206, 25 July 1921, Page 3

THE COUNTRY.

j STEAM PLOUGHING. PROFITABLE CONTRACTS IN BRITAIN. In an account whioh. he gave to the Council of Agriculture conference at Wellington last week of a recent journey abroad, Mr W. D. Hunt made some interesting remarks about the way in which steam ploughing contracts apparently paid the contractors. "I met a most interesting man in Northamptonshire," said Mr Hunt. "He was a steam ploughing contractor, and made his living by doing this class of work. Ho owned three steam P' a^~ s and spent his time touring round tne country in a motor-car watching uis plants, and arranging contracts tor them. He was taking contracts from just ordinary farmers in the dl s tn .°;;> working in many quite small paddocit . He had to compete in price and efficiency with the farmers' own teams or else he would not get the work, but he told me that it paid him quite well, i± reckoned that each plant he had was worth £I.OOO a year net profit to him. "When we were going along togetner he Dointed to a house we were passing, and said: "The man who lives there is a steam ploughing contractor also; ou he is in a bigger way than I am. e tas seven plants. I reckon he make® a thousand a year out of each of his a sp, because a short while ago he was had up in a breach of promise case, and was let in for £2OOO damages, and he said to me after it was over: 'There is profit on two plants gone for a year. "I asked this man if he did not think that the petrol tractor would beat tne steam tractor, but he would not listen to it. He had tried the petro]l tractor, but said there was too much time lost over breakages. Something was always going wrong, and, the hfe ot a petrol tractor was very short, whereas the steam plants lasted for many y ear ®~ "It Beems to me that these plants would do most excellent work in New Zealand. Our conditions here m many parts are very much the same as tiose in England. A steam plant would, or course, be too big for most farmers. They will plough about twenty acres a day each, and do other work m proportion ; but if several farmers m a district joined together they might get some contractor to get a plant and do tneir work for them." Jottings for Farmers. To-morrow, at Wellington, the New Zealand Farmers' Union will commence its twentieth annual conference under the presidency of Mr G.W. Eeadley, Ashburton. It will be attended by delegates from all parts of the Dominion, as well as by the'provincial presidents and other executive officers. The programme provides for a session of tour days Tne conference will deal with 188 remits, of which eleven will be discussed in committee. The remits cover a very wide range of subjects. 1 roposala will' be submitted, in respect to land legislation, taxation, . financial matters, Customs tariff, politics, trade and commerce, dairy matters, agricultural and pastoral questions, defence, post and telegraphs, railways, roads, local' government, industrial matters. Remits relating to the increased bank interest, retaliatory tarfff against articles manufactured 'in the United States; establishment of co-operative credit banks; a producers' shipping company; marketing of wool; waterfront labour; and the. doing away with preference to unionists are expected to be subjects of interesting discussion.

"■\yhat I saw of the agricultural life and doings in the United States was chiefly in the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and lowa," said Mr W. D. Hunt, in a paper read before the Council of Agriculture at Wellington last week. "Of all that I saw, what perhaps struck me more forcibly than anything else was the use that they make orsiloa. It seems to me that we can take a lesson from them in this respect of advantage to ourselves, particularly in connexion with our dairying'industry. . The silos axe not met with jiust occasionally ; they are literally there in thousands practically every farm has them. The modern silo is a circular erection built of reinforced concrete, and they run to a tremend us height. The usual diameter is anything from ten to twenty feet, and they generallv run in height from four to six times the diameter:. The highest I saw was 90 feet high, but I was told that they sometimes run considerably over 100 feet. They are all circular in form. I enquired as to the octet of building the-e, and was amazed at the cheapness and rapidity with which they are constructed. ... . I feel sure that silos built on the American system wou'd be a great value to dairy-farmers in this country.'?

"In my tour through England and Scotland a matter that struck me most forcibly," said Mr W. I>. • Hunt in a paper read before tlie Conncil of AgriCulture, at Wellington, "and one that I thought we could take a lesson from in New Zealand, was the 1 careful manner in which they fed their live stock. Wherever I went the stock seemed to have abundance of feed, and from our New Zealand point of view the country was under-stocked. I do not think I saw a single place where the stock did not seem to have all the feed that they required. In a similar tour through' New Zealand you would. find a very large proportion of the properties you passed with the stock on them looking as if they could do with a bit more feed. Overstocking is very preva-

lent in this country—it is practically non-existent in Great Britain . . . We have been grazing stock in this country tor a little more than a generation, whereas in Great ' Britain they have centuries of experience behind them. £ waa quite evident from what I Baw there that the lesson of the evil effects of overstocking has been thoroughly learned in Great Britain. In this country many of our farmers have still a lot to learn in thiß direction." ASHBUETON. The total output of butter for the season' at the Ashburton factory promises to exceed that of last year by about 100 tons. At the monthly meeting of the Tinwald School Committee the headmaster reported that the average attendance for the month of June was IS4. A successful hare drive had reaped £l3 10s, which carried a £ for £ subsidy,' and the proceeds would be devoted to improving the school grounds.. The chairman (Mr J. Lowry) was appointed the school Committee's representative for the election of the members of the new Board of Governors of the Ashburton Technical School. Arnold James Wells, of Dromore, who was admitted to the Ashburton Hospital suffering from a broken thigh through a motor collision on the Main South road, is progressing favourably. He was riding a motor-cycle, when there was a head-on collision with a nw^or-cj 11 ") driven by Ro&ert Parsons, of E'ffelton. The cycle got wedged between one. of the front wheels of the motor-car, and Wells was thrown' through the wind-screen. The motorcycle was badly damaged.