The Press WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1945. Ashley Dene

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24741, 5 December 1945, Page 6

The Press WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1945. Ashley Dene

The report (printed on Saturday) in which the progress of the Lincoln College experiments at Ashley Dene was traced to their flourishing success is one of momentous interest in Canterbury—and not only in Canterbury. What has been done at Ashley Dene during the last seven or eight years is not, of course, now described and measured for the first time. Though the system of management has only latterly been standardised, it was clear at a fairly early stage that the principles on which the system is based could be applied with advantage; and throughout the period in which a standard practice has been experimentally worked out, the results have attracted the close attention of farmers. There were, however, questions which only time and careful checking could answer. The extent to which the productive capacity of the land can •be improved is now shown to be more than three-fold, and that may not be the limit. It has been shown, besides, that this is a genuine improvement in productivity, such as can be maintained by consistent practice, and not a forced short-run gain in production, such as cannot be maintained by any practice; that the Qew x Ashley Dene practice is applicable, with such possible variations as may be worked out by similar local experiments, over large areas of characteristic Canterbury light land; and that it is, in the correct sense of the word, economic practice. The only qualification of this last point is that, temporarily, the change-over to this practice may reduce net farm revenue. Of three or four comments which suggest themselves, the first bears on this. The farmer who wants to change over should be able to count on public provision of cheap money, if he needs it, to carry him through this stage of difficulty. Second, the Ashley ' Dene results will have to be compared with those of experiments on light land under irrigation. The Ashley Dene technique does not invalidate irrigation technique, nor the second the first; but it is clearly of the highest importance to work out the proper correlation of both in Canterbury climate and soils. Third, although Ashley Dene is not an erosion area, the work done there is of a kind which soil conservation policy will have to encourage and promote. If the North Canterbury Catchment Board, for example, should, think of adopting, (and adapting), the T.V.A. policy of demonstration farms, where methods applicable in erosion areas are tested, it will have this practical analogy in Canterbury to refer to. Fourth, if it were necessary now to argue the worth, in an agricultural economy, of such a centre of research and teaching as Lincoln College, a clinching argument would be found in the work the college has designed and done at Ashley Dene. It may be said, perhaps truly, that no fresh argument is necessary, when the case is already proved. But it is very far from true that national policy has given Lincoln College the means to develop its work according to its worth; and there the argument can be, and should be, pressed hard.