MUCH OF WORLD’S LAND POORLY USED

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30200, 3 August 1963, Page 7

MUCH OF WORLD’S LAND POORLY USED

T. P. PALMER, a plant A breeder at the Crop Research Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, at Lincoln, has returned from a three months’ world tour impressed by the extent of country, even in the most

populated parts of the world, which is not used or inefficiently used.

France, Britain. Canada, and the United States, among others, could produce a great dead more food, he said. Without much extra technical knowledge New Zealand could increase its production five to 10 times, and in some of these other countries the potential for increase was considerably greater, he said. Two intensively farmed areas were the Lombardy plains of Northern Italy, where irrigation systems dated back to the days of the Romans, and Denmark. On the plains, where much of the land was in pasture that was pure ladino clover when it was initially sown down, all of the growth was cut and fed to dairy cattle which were being run at one to one and a half milking cows to the acre. Now a lot of this land was going out of dairying and being put into poplars on a 12-year rotation tor cellulose manufacture.

In Denmark, Mr Palmer said, it had been found that barley would produce more units of feed for stock than Pasture and this was used mainly in pig meat production. He had gained the impression that pig meat production in Denmark was similar to lamb production in New Zealand, and like New Zealand, the Danes also had to chase markets, particularly for pig meats. Mr Palmer contrasted the urgency of the search for markets by countries like Denmark and New Zealand, compared with countries where agriculture was protected. In the United States there was the ironical situation of people buying land and making money out of it by putting it into “the soil bank” —being paid for taking it out of production. Mr Palmer was impressed by the absence of supplies of meat in many countries or else by the high cost of what was available. He said he felt that not enough meat was produced by countries like New Zealand to give people an opportunity to acquire a taste for it and thereby create a market. In Milan he noted that there were fide or six fish shops to every butcher’s shop. He thought that.if meat had been available people would probably have preferred it to fish and because they were living in a condition of prosperity would have been as well able to buy it as were New Zealanders.

Mr Palmer said that he felt that very much the same story would apply to meat as to wool —it was feared that through lack of wool consumers might turn to something else. In Greece, Mr Palmer said, lamb had tasted as good as New Zealand lamb and he had seen more meat on sale there than in any other country in Europe.

In Greece and Crete MiPalmer saw sheep being milked and he also tried his hand at it himself. The milker stands astride the animal and facing backwards milks into a bowl behind the sheep. He said that the sheep gave about a cupful of milk a milking. It seemed that farmers were making about as much out of the milk as New Zealand farmers were getting from the wool off- a sheep. When Mr Palmer was in Crete shepherds were hard to get. They were asking for more pay and transistor radios to while away the time.

In Spain. Mr Palmer observed that the State was putting a lot of support into agricultural development—into irrigation and rural housing—and both in Spain and in southern Ireland much industrialisation was in progress to utilise resources of labour. Mr Palmer found that farmers in southern Ireland were taking indirect advantage of British subsidies by selling store cattle to British farmers who could pay more for them because of the subsidies that they eventually got on the meat. In range country in Canada he saw sheep flocks being herded by men who followed them with cars and caravans, and on the prairies, after the grain harvest, farmers either went to town to live or spent the winter at curling clubs in the little townships and then went off to Scotland for the championships. Mr Palmer will be receiving seed from some wild lucerne in the Mediterranean areas as a result of his visit, and also seed from early varieties of maize that are being grown in Nova Scotia and might have possibilities for a grain crop. Bees In Utah he was interested in wild bees which pollinate lucerne. One of these nests in holes in wood and in soft drink straws. Farmers sometimes sell them to neighbours. making more money out of the bees than out of their crops. Another bee is ground nesting and a hole is scooped out of the ground with layers of shingle and soil laid on a polythene sheet. Water is introduced to the bed by a pipe. The bees are “planted” in this bed. Mr Palmer said that these bees were both very good pollinators. It was not known whether they would live in New Zealand temperatures, but their introduction would depend on the reaction of bee-keepers and quarantine authorities. Because they were only remotely related to the honey bee it was not thought that there would be a great risk of bringing in disease that would affect the honey bee. and, further, they could be managed very much as a domestic animal.