Scientist To Plough

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31362, 6 May 1967, Page 14

Scientist To Plough

A research scientist —a plant pathologist from Canada arrived in Christchurch yesterday to plough in next week’s world ploughing contest at Prebbleton-Broadfield.

He is Dr. C. Willis, who is on the staff of the Canadian Department of Agriculture’s research station at Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island.

How was it that a research scientist was also a champion ploughman. Dr. Willis, who is 29, was asked when he arrived at Harewood. He said one reason was that he was born and brought up on a farm only six miles from the station where he now worked, and while he

was still at home he started competition ploughing at the age of 15. Another reason was that his fathc had started before him and bad ploughed twice in world ploughing contests—at Peebles in Ohio in 1957 and in Austria in 1964. Dr. Willis, whose father Is still on the home farm of 65 acres, has ploughed twice in world contests. In Northern Ireland in 1959 he was third and in Norway in 1965 he was well down the list—“l have been going downhill.” This will be Dr. Willis’s last world contest, because the rules for the contest allow a man to plough only three times. As far as he knew, Dr. Willis said, he and his father were the. only father and son who had been in world ploughing contests: Both father and son have won a Canadian national ttile.

Dr. Willis won in April last year and then earned the right to plough in Canterbury next week. He said that he had not turned a furrow with a plough since. When he left home on May 3 the ground was still frozen and about two-thirds of the ground was covered by snow. “We are having one of the latest springs for a long time,” he said. Dr. Willis’s work Is with dis ses of forage legumes, in particular red clover and then lucerne. Before coming to Christchurch he visited research organisations in the North Island—Auckland University and the headquarters of the Plant Diseases Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Auckland, Ruakura, Agricultural Research Centre at Hamilton, Massey University and the sub-station of the Plants Diseases Division at Palmerston North.