THE WEEK

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26396, 14 April 1951, Page 5

THE WEEK

ONE DAY SALES AT ADDINGTON

In present circumstances the Railways Department is unable to cope wiui a two-day sale at Addington, and from next Wednesday, April 18, sales will return to one day a week. Anzac Day makes a readjustment necessary the week after next, and the sale lor that week will be held on Tuesday, April 24, and will be for fat stock only. Thereafter the sales will revert to the one-day fixture on Wednesdays. Breaking the sales into two days has been an unqualified success, and without doubt the system will be carried out every autumn. Difficulties witn transport, and shortage of labour, have made it increasingly difficult in recent years to do lull justice to either fat stock or store Stock at one-day sales. It is difficult to see how the big autumn yardings of store sheep and lambs, with substantial offerings of fat sheep, lambs, and cattle, could have been handled at all in the one day at the height of the season this autumn. Yardings were not particularly heavy judged by the standards of former years, except in the case of store lambs, of which offerings were consistently high. A season in which offerings of all descriptions of sheep and lambs would be unusually large can easily be imagined, and in such an event one-day sales would make it practically impossible to handle the humber of stock in present-day conditions. The only section likely to have been affected was the store cattle sale, which was held on Tuesdays this autumn, during the fat stock sale. As it turned out, yardings were the normal heavy autumn ones, and the section appeared to suffer no price disadvantage at all. The two-day system, of course, revived the movement to have the yards moved out of the city area, but no new arguments were produced, and a solid section of the business community realises fully what the Addington markets mean to it in tenths of potential customers brought into the city.

TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA Mr H. P. Schapper, who has been a member of the farm management staff at Lincoln College since 194#, has accepted a position with the University of Western Australia as Research Fellow in Farm Management. He will take up his new position in September. Mr Schapper is one of the many men on the academic staff of the college who learned the practical side of farming the hard way. He was born in Melbourne, and took a diploma in agriculture at Dookie Agricultural College. With his new diploma in his pocket, he looked for a job in Australia, but could get nothing at more than a pittance, in spite of the diploma. Wages m New Zealand were then relatively high, and by Australian standards were most attractive, so in 1939 he came to New Zealand to learn practical farming. His introduction to New Zealand agriculture was a job in Central Otago rabbiting on wages. He saw his first snow that winter, end made a thorough job of it. The snow was the big one of 1939, which is recalled as among the bitterest visitations the Central has had. He then went to the Wairarapa, where he drove a team for a while, before coming to Canterbury to Work on a threshing mill, 'where wages were good. He recalls this work as the hardest he has ever done. By the end of the season he had been in New Zealand for 15 months, and had built up his capital to Al2O. He .spent this money on taking the valuation and farm management course at Lincoln, and after graduating, worked as a porter at the college while waiting to go back to a threshing mill. After the threshing season, he worked for six months on *a dairy farm in Taranaki, before taking over the farm supervisory department of a Taranaki stock and station firm, where he remained for two years. In 1943 he workedin an electrical equipment factory in Wellington, and while there took a B.A. at Victoria College. At Lincoln, Mr Schapper has been concerned with teaching, and with th* farm advisory service run by the college, and has become widely known to South Island farmers. The Western Australian position is a new one for that university, and is being subsidised by the rural credit department of the Commonwealth Bank, which is sponsoring several related research positions in Australia. DIFFICULT AUTUMN AU districts on the East Coast from Marlborough to the Waitaki river have had a most unfavourable harvesting season, according to the monthly survey made by officers of the Department of Agriculture. Harvest is mostly now except for the red clover and potato crops, and some wheat, linseed and linen flax. The weather during March, which is covered by the reports, was most unfavourable for harvesting. It was the third successive month in which rainfall was more than twice the normal amount. Jemperatures were generally mild, though one or two light frosts occurred. There were no strong winds.

The wheat harvest was practically completed during the month, but some crops were still out on heavy and wet land. It was a difficult harvest. Yields were above average in all districts, but the sample in - many cases was overmature; bleached and sprouted. Most barley is in. Yields have been good, and the sample better than expected. Few potato crops have yet been lifted, and as a good many are already showing signs Of rot from waterlogged ground, losses may be serious if the weather does not take up. In any case a late harvest is expected. Tops have been affected by blight in most districts, but blight has not yet spread to the tubers. Yields of onions have been average, and many crops have been affected with mildew and neck rot. A large quantity of ryegrass seed was saved in spite' of the difficult harvest. Many samples are discoloured, byt germination appears to have been fairly good. Yields of white clover in South Canterbury have been light. ■ but the .quality is good, and the seed very free from suckling clover. In Mid-Canterbury a large amount of seed has been saved, even though losses have been heavy, and as high as 50 per cent, in some late crops. Some crops have had to be abandoned in North Canterbury. Yields have been average, but some good returns have been obtained from paddocks harvested after hay. The red clover crops in South Canterbury are maturing rapidly and are setting seed well, but in Mid-Canter-bury the crops are not setting much seed and yields will probably be light North Canterbury crops are still, making growth, but are not setting seed well, and yields are expected to be light. Cowgrass yields in Marlborough are satisfactory. Subterranean clover crops in Marlborough are all either threshed or in stack. Yields have not been good so far. Growth of forage crops has been excellent Some districts report that lambs are not fattening well on rape, which is still growing. While crops have had a bad time, pastures have continued to produce abnormally heavily, and th? feed posi- . tion is everywhere good, and in some cases the amount available is M < r... harassment. In South and Mid-Canter-bury, damage by both Porina ana glass grub is fairly widespread. At present the damage is not serious, because pasture growth is more than taking care of the depredations of the insects, but when growth slows up with frosts, damage will become more apparent.