GRASSLAND FARMING

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25660, 24 November 1948, Page 4

GRASSLAND FARMING

NEED FOR FULL DEVELOPMENT

IMPORTANCE TO NATIONAL ECONOMY Grassland farming and its development to the utmost were essential for the holding together of New Zealand's economic structure, but this was not realised nationally, said Mr A. H. Cockayne in his presidential address to the New Zealand Grassland Association’s annual conference last evening. “We are rather content to say we have become the finest grassland farmers in the world, that we are capable of enormous development, and to leave it at that,” he said. “It would rather appear that the fact that grassland In the end will have to pay for nearly everything, in other words will have to pay for our standard of living, is not properly realised.” The improvement of all grasslands was necessary and the only way to bring about a more prosperous land in which all would benefit, Mr Cockayne continued. It was felt that the Government realised the position, but had a feeling that the panacea was to be found in a guaranteed price. To secure anything like maximum production from grasslands would require capital expenditure far in excess of the capacity of individuals. There were millions of pounds necessary for top-dressing, millions for re-seeding, millions for drainage on the one hand and irrigation on the other, and millions for deferred maintenance.

England was spending more than £8,000,000,000 ffi a policy of industrial development—that was spending millions in strengthening the framework of her national economy, Mr Cockayne said. New Zealand likewise should be spending millions on strengthening the framework of her own national economy—grassland farming. Mr Cockayne said that New Zealand had nearly reached the stage where increased acreage of grassland could not be achieved by bringing in* large additional areas of virgin country. The future prosperity of the country lay in increasing the fertility of existing grasslands. Knowledge gained by experience and research was sufficient, if applied fully, to increase enormously the production from grassland.