Pasture Improvement Now ‘Difficult’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32143, 12 November 1969, Page 1

Pasture Improvement Now ‘Difficult’

(New Zealand Press Association) MASTERTON, November 11. The next 50 per cent increase in New Zealand’s grasslands production would be more difficult to achieve than the previous 50 per cent, the assistant director of the D.S.I.R. (Mr I. L. Baumgart) told the conference of the Grassland Association in Masterton today.

It appeared that New Zealand’s agriculture was. working efficiently, based on plants growing and stock grazing them with the minimum of attention, he said. It provided a low-cost production. But although it might be thought that this “pleasant state of affairs” would continue the industry was facing serious competition, trade restrictions and marketing problems for two out of three of its products. Mr Baumgart said the success achieved In the past in increasing production had been much easier than future successes were likely to be. “It is most unlikely that a major management break such as phosphate topdressing or a major plant break such as the replacement of native grasses or low-fertility species with highly productive, speci-ally-bred ryegrasses and clovers will occur agqin and give us the terrific? boost we achieved then?*v There were three major

areas in which research seemed likely to yield early and important contributions to New Zealand grasslands, he said. These were the production of plants which would make better use of available nutrients, the matching of pasture output to the requirements of the grazing animal, and the raising of the quality of pasture plants in North Island hill country.