End Of Link With Flax

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30094, 30 March 1963, Page 6

End Of Link With Flax

A man with a long and distinguished service to New Zealand agriculture will give up his last • active post next week when he retires as a director of the Linen Flax Corporation. He is Mr J. W. Hadfield, a former director of the Agronomy Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which is now the Crop Research Division, wartime director of linen flax development and production a" 1 after the war general manager of the Linen Flax Corporation. Mr Hadfield was born in the Loyalty Islands in the Pacific where his father was a missionary for 40 years. He was sent to England to be educated and from Eltham College in London he went to Hawkesbury Agricultural College in Australia where he gained a diploma. He was the first officer to be appointed to the Hurlston Agricultural College near Sydney when it was established on the lines of the Fielding Agricultural High School and subsequently he returned to Hawkesbury to lecture in agriculture. < In 1914 when he came to New Zealand. Mr Hadfield took'a post as agricultural instructor to the Auckland Education Board and in 1920

he took charge of the Moa seed farm at Ettrick, in Central Otago, which was used for the training of returned soldiers. It was there that he gained experience that was to stand him and the country in good stead when he established seed certification and laid a sound basis for the seed industry. In 1926 Mr Hadfield became agricultural instructor in Canterbury and while in this position he began seed certification with wheat and potatoes and when in 1928 he moved to Palmerston North as agronomist at the plant research station, he continued this work, extending it to strains of grasses

and clovers in the light of the discovery of the importance of strains by Mr Bruce Levy (now Sir Bruce Levy) and his fellow workers. When the Plant Research Bureau was set up under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and subdivided into a series of divisions, Mr Hadfield came to Christchurch in 1936 to start the Agronomy Division, which was the forerunner of the present Crop Research Division. As director of the Agronomy Division one of Mr Hadfield’s tasks was the study of new crops and one of these was linen flax. The consideration here was not only the diversification of New .Zealand's farm production but the possible strategic importance of this crop to Britain in the event of war. Soon Mr Hadfield began to specialise on linen flax and in 1938 he visited Australia to see the industry there. In i the following year he went to Britain and the Continent and he was there when war broke out. He was able to acquire machinery for a pilot processing plant that served as a model for New Zealand engineers to build the prcces- ' sing plant, subsequently needed for the country’s own : industry. In 194® the British Government asked New Zealand to < grow 15,000 acres of linen i

flax and soon afterwards before the first crop was harvested, with European supplies cut off, the appeal came from England for New Zealand to produce to her uttermost capacity. As director of linen flax development Mr Hadfield was intimately associated with the development of this industry. Much of the equipment for the 17 factories which were at one time operating was built by the Railways Department and a Christchurch firm. Andrews and Beaven, produced the pullers needed to harvest the crop at cost In 1942-43 a peak area of 21,858 acres of flax was grown in New Zealand. This crop was well beyond the capacity of the factories to process, but under the war-time agreement long fibre and rescutched tow to the value of nearly £2m was sent to Britain. Vital Mr Hadfield recalls that flax was so vital to wartime Britain that food was once unloaded off a ship at Bluff so that flax could take itr place Tile war-time flax controller in the United Kingdom has said that the response of New Zealand to the call to grow flax played a vital part in its contribution to their requirements. After the war when the Unen Flax Corporation was formed Mr Hadfield became its general manager until in 1948 on the death of the late R. A. Calder he returned again to the Agronomy Division as director until Dr. O. H. Frankel became director of the reorganised Crop Research Division in 1950. Mr Hadfield has continued his association with the flax industry as grader of flax until 1961 and up until now as a director. Now the industry has been reduced to one factory at Geraldine handling a crop of 700 or 800 acres. Although New Zealand does not have the ideal even climate desirable for flax growing. Mr Hadfield said that the fibre extraction rate of the crop at about 10 to 11 per cent, approached that of Belgium, which had been one of the foremost flax-growing countries of the world. Meantime an endeavour was being made to maintain the industry as a means of saving overseas funds by providing two-thirds ot the fibre requirements of Donaghys Rope and Twine Company and as a nucleus of an industry that could be expanded if need be. though Unen flax would never be as important again due to the increase in use of artificial fibres. The author of several books of an agricultural nature, including a review of the linen flax industry in New Zealand. Mr Hadfield was honoured by the Queen in 1953 by the award of the O.BE. for his services to agriculture.