Scope Near City For Vegetable Crops

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31993, 21 May 1969, Page 20

Scope Near City For Vegetable Crops

“I understand that a Crop Research Division estimate of the potential acreage of soils suitable for large-scale production of vegetable crops within a workable distance of a processing centre to the west of Christchurch is about 170,000 acres,” the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Taiboys) said on Monday evening.

Mr Taiboys was addressing a seminar at Lincoln College. His audience included research and advisory personnel, representatives of process growers and processing firms and farmers interested I in process crop growing. “In terms of our comparative shortage of good soils of this sort so eminently suited for this type of intensive production, this is a national asset of great value,” Mr Talboys said. Even modest success with research applied to a potential of about 170,000 acres would have repercussions far beyond the comparatively small scale of the research effort. Earlier Mr Taiboys said that there was a research contract between the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and Lincoln College which provided for the horticulture department to study the extensive production of vegetable crops and to develop techniques to reduce labour and increase the scale of operations. “It would seem to me highly desirable that there should be a periodic reconvening of the interests here today to ensure that development is guided, that the full implications of developments

I are examined periodically, that full advantage is taken of the potentialities as they appear and to prevent any section of the chain of research, extension, production and processing developing unexpected weak links,” he said. New Zealanders, he said, were beginning to appreciate that there was a real potential in its horticulture, much of it in process crops.