PRODUCTION FOR BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25447, 19 March 1948, Page 8

PRODUCTION FOR BRITAIN

APPEAL BY MR G. H. GRIGG

INCREASED USE OF LIME ' URGED

“What more can we in New Zealand do to help our Mother Country?” asked Mr G. H. Grigg in his presidential address to the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association last evening. “One way is by producing more food, especially more meat. Britain’s own annual production of meat is down by about 350,000 tons to-day compared with 1939. This is about equal to New Zealand’s annual export, which last season was 360,000 tons, a record tonnage exported. I think it will take many years, for Britain to increase her meat production to the pre-war level. “When you realise that one penny increase in the weekly meat ration means an additional 100,000 tons a year, or that New Zealand’s total export of meat equals 3|d in the present Is weekly ration, you will see what huge quantities are required by Britain. Our farmers are doing all that is possible under to-day’s conditions to produce food for the Old Country. How, then, are we to increase our production?

“I believe that it can be done over a period of years by an increased use of lime on our pastoral apd agricultural lands,” Mr Grigg said. “Our farmers are beginning to be limeminded, ' and they have increased its use in Canterbury by 125 per cent in the last six years. 75,000 tons being used in the 1940-41 season, and 170,001 tons in 1946-47. I know of farms in Canterbury that have doubled their production by the use of lime, and there are many parts of Canterbury where that can be done and would be done if lime was available at a reasonable cost at the farm gate. But the position to-day is that the farmer is unable to obtain the lime he wants, the bottlenecks being railway transport and insufficient lime works.”

Suggestions on Transport •After reviewing the supply of lime in recent years Mr Grigg made the following suggestions:—(l) that all lime be delivered from works by motorlorry to farms for a radius of about 25 miles, thereby leaving the railway free for the longer haulage; (2) that new lime works be operated wherever economically possible; (3) that uncrushed lime be delivered by rail to certain districts where it could be crushed and delivered by motor-lorry to the farms. (The great advantageofthis.be said, would be that the railway could carry the uncrushed lime in the slack season and there would be a quick turn-round of trucks and a tremendous saving in sacks); (4) that priority number one be given to all machinery and building materials needed for extending or building new lime works. “Some may say ‘why should lime be subsidised to the farmers?’ ” said Mr Grigg. “The reasons are:—(l) lime is used in tons and not hundredweights, and where it has to be delivered over long distances, the farmers could not afford to use it: (2) lime is slow acting in results, and if too high in price, the farmer cannot afford to use the quantities necessary for good results; (3) if farmers are encouraged to use lime, any increase in production brought about is a national asset and a tremendous, benefit to the prosperity of New Zealand as a whole.” Mr Grigg suggested that the Canterbury Progress League should call a conference of all concerned in the production, transport, and use of lime, and to recommend, plans for development of the industry in Canterbury and the best methods of subsidy.