Great Ploughing Event

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 23

Great Ploughing Event

Three of the greatest days in the history of competitive ploughing in New Zealand will begin tomorrow.

The 12th New Zealand Ploughing Championships will begin at 1030 a.m. tomorrow in the Prebbleton-Broadfield district, 10 miles from Christchurch. At Ham on Thursday the 14th World Ploughing Contest will begin with stubble ploughing, and on Saturday the world contest will continue at 1030 a.m. with the grassland ploughing. On each of the three days competitors will plough about half an acre.

About 28 ploughmen from 16 countries will take part in the world contest for the Golden Plough, and 23 ploughmen who have won qualifying contests all over New Zealand will take part in the New Zealand championships for the Atlantic Silver Plough.

Since New Zealand first competed in world ploughing contests in 1956, New Zealand ploughing administrators have hoped that a world contest would one day

be held In this country, and J. C. Brooker, the first man to represent New Zealand at a world contest, recalls having proposed to the World Ploughing Organisation that New Zealand should be the site for a world match. It was not until 1964, however, that the holding of the 1967 contest in New Zealand was finally confirmed. It is appropriate that Canterbury should have been selected as the site in New

Zealand for the contest, as it is in this province, with its extensive plainslands, that more cropping and cultivation are done than anywhere else in the country, and match ploughing has been a traditional rural activity in this district since the earliest days of settlement.

It will be a colourful occasion at PrebbletonBroadfield this week with gaily painted tractors and ploughs and the leading

ploughmen from all parts of the world turning over the good earth in an age old art for the ploughing supremacy of the world. It will also be one of the biggest international events ever held in this country. Competitive ploughing will

not be the only thing to see at the contest site. The organisers have arranged an extensive programme of side attractions. There will be polo and dog trials, oldtime threshing mill and chaff cutting displays, exhibitions of ploughing of various types and a display of ploughs of earlier days, a “Queen of the Furrow” contest for young women with a connexion with the land and mannequin parades showing off wool garments; and trade displays covering five acres and a half to six acres of ground.