Ploughing Supremacy

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31363, 8 May 1967, Page 14

Ploughing Supremacy

Some 30 competitors from 16 countries are expected to take part in the fourteenth international competition organised by the World Ploughing Organisation. To be held in New Zealand for the first time, the contest will open at Hornby this Friday. The first object of the contest is to improve methods of cultivation. Friendly international rivalry must serve to highlight the need, felt in every country regardless of its status as a primary producer, to grow more food for an ever-increasing world population. The contests have a considerable interest on the technical side. It is not merely that skills are fostered when expert ploughmen meet, year after year, in a keenly-fought contest The implements themselves may be changed in design as designers find ways to make them more adaptable, and generally more efficient, according to widely varying soil conditions. It is of interest here, for instance, that it has been necessary to irrigate the grassland chosen for the contest because of the abnormally dry autumn in coastal Canterbury. Not least in importance is the good will created through the meeting of skilled technicians from many lands, not only in competition but socially in the various arrangements made for discussion and entertainment. Ploughs and tractors from other countries will be of special interest to the New Zealand farming community. Some ploughs which have special features within the limits of a necessary standardisation will add usefully to local knowledge and experience. The Atlantic Union Oil Company, by its persistent sponsorship of ploughing contests’ in New Zealand, is contributing to improved methods of tillage and to increased farm output The contest about to be held between the world’s leading exponents of an ancient skill is certain to attract wide interest in New Zealand. It will help also to make this country better known abroad.