N.Z. Officer To Advise On Pastures In Nepal

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29784, 29 March 1962, Page 17

N.Z. Officer To Advise On Pastures In Nepal

Mr D. I. Glue, farm advisory officer in the Wellington district for the Department of Agriculture, will leave on May 1 to spend 15 months in Nepal establishing and superv sing an experimental plot in Pokhara designed to improve Nepalese pastures. Mr Glue spent four months in Nepal last year investigating Nepalese needs on behalf of the Department of External Affairs as a preliminary to his present mission, which will be part of New Zealand’s Colombo Plan aid to the underdeveloped country.

This time he will return with his wife and family and for the next 15 months will live in tents at Pokhara, which is on a plain at 3000 ft and 80 miles from Katmandu. “I have never seen a country where conditions are so approximate to those of New Zealand —the same weeds grow in Katmandu as grow in my garden in Upper Hutt,” said Mr Ghte yesterday. A former Christchurch man, Mr Glue has been spending a few days with his father. Mr W. P. Glue. Nepal, a countty about the size of the South Island and shaped somewhat similarly, but with a population of 9.5 million, was sadly in need of assistance in agriculture, Mr Glue said. New Zealand was well placed to provide the assistance.

“We can teach them nothing about cropping—they grow three crops a year—but their pastures can be improved, and this will automatically bring about an improvement in the stock,” Mr Glue said. Land Tenure One drawback to farming improvement was the lack of any system of land tenure, he said. All pasture-land was owned by foe Government. and villages paid a grazing fee. “Squatters” simply fenced off a block of Land sufficiently big for them to farm.

The stock at present was badly in need of improvement. The sheep, primarily Merino, had lost their original characteristics and defied description by experts. Similarly, dairy cattle, which could thrive on good pasture, were poor animals. Nepalese women worked hard, b'r Glue said, and for many of them the work consisted of going out and gathering fodder to feed to cattle which bad no natural grazing.

AM this, he was sure, could be changed by adopting New Zealand practices of pasture improvement. "Their way to prosperity is the way we have here, including aerial •.opdressing,” be said. Some pilots of the Nepalese Air Corporation were keen to enter private flying and do topdressing. The climate was ideally

suited to the growing of New Zealand grasses. On the lower parts of the country—which stretched from a subtropical climate zone into toe alpine region with the highest mountains in the world—Mr Glue thought New Zealand white clover, red oiover, ryegrass and lucerne would grow better than they did in New Zealand. From 4000 ft to 9000 ft New Zealand species could be grown, but above 9000 ft Mr Glue did not think it would be worth-while.

Although the country had no real records of rainfall, sunshine and other weather observations, there was no doubt that the climate, with its “regulated” monsoon rainfall, provided the essentials for good pasture land, Mr Glue said. Stock Improvement

Originally. New Zealand had planned to send stock to Nepal under the Colombo Plan, but with the present feed it would not survive. Once good pasture was established there would be no bar to New Zealand stock being introduced and the present stock becoming greatly improved.

Nepal had a valuable wool industry awaiting to be tapped, and the sheep indus-

try could be used to supply mutton, for both Hindu and Buddhist religious bars stopped short of sheep and goats.

Previously there had been considerable trade with Tibet With the Chinese Communist takeover of the country trade had been slowed. “but the Chinese take their guards off the border at night, and there is some trade still.” Across the border in India there was a market for milk, cheese and butter. When Mr Glue was last in Nepal he had some New Zealand company for a while, occupying some of the base camps of Sir Edmund Hillary on his investigations in toe mountainous regions. His previous visit will be of value to him when he returns, as will the Nepalese knowledge of New Zealand Great masses of the country are illiterate, but Mr Glue found that while many people would never have heard of Germany, they knew of New Zealand. This came about through Sir Edmund Hillary’s exploits and through toe friendship formed by Gurkhas with New Zealand soldiers in the Second World War.

This time, Mr Glue will go into a country which is just emerging from primitiveness, politically and socially, with the knowledge that he has some goodwill on his and New Zealand's side. On New Zealand standards, he and his family will have to “rough it” in a country which has only one road—from the Indian border to Katmandu—and which relies on air transport to a few airstrips or walking as means of transport. But he has arranged tor New Zealand Correspondence School lessons for his sons, aged five and seven.