Farm Production 'Below Potential’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32301, 20 May 1970, Page 10

Farm Production 'Below Potential’

The average production of both lowland and hill country farms was well below their potential, Dr L. Corkill, director of the Grasslands Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, told the conference of the New Zeatland Grassland Association

which opened at Lincoln College yesterday.

Dr Corkill, who was director of the Crop Research Division at Lincoln before he took up his present position, said that a simple calculation based on stock numbers and the area in grassland in New Zealand showed that over the last 40 years carrying capacity had increased from 1.4 to 3.2 sheep per acre or 130 per cent. Many factors had contributed to this increase,

including improved stock and stock management practices, as well as improved pasture plants, pasture nutrition and pasture management.

The present carrying capacity, however, was well below par. Brougham and Glenday had reported an annual yield of 22,0001 b of dry matter per acre from a ryegrass-clover pasture without high fertiliser application, irrigation or applied nitrogen. On unploughable hill country pastures Suckling had obtained yields of 90001 b per acre, with more than double that production on stock camps. If fully utilised these pas-

tures would be capable of: carrying from eight to 19; ewe equivalents per acre. “The fact that practice is not keeping pace with technical knowledge may be a good reason for increasing farm advisory services and improving the economic climate for the farmer, but it is no excuse for the grassland scientist to reduce his research effort,” he said. After reviewing some of the

fields in which grassland research is being carried out and the direction It may follow in the future, Dr Corkill said that the requirement was for better pasture

plants, improved plant nutrition, pasture management and pasture utilisation. Every line of investigation would be expected to contribute in part to the development of improved farming systems. Experimentation was required on a pilot-farm scale in which the results from soil-plant-animal research were synthesised into farming systems for the more efficient production of animal products from grassland.