Poppies Help Out On Small Farm

Press, Issue 32345, 10 July 1970, Page 10

Poppies Help Out On Small Farm

I A former Lincoln College student, Mr R. G. Rockliff, who has been farming at Sassafras on the north-west coast of Tasmania since he left college, said in Christchurch this week that farming was definitely going through a depression in Australia at present. People all over the country were pessimistic about the future of the industry. Every year the barley i price seemed to drop another 10c and it looked as though there would be a further drop in the wheat

price this year. Tasmanian! farmers had been fortunate in that the wheat quota, given the state by the i Wheat Board was in excess! of what had ever been grown in the state, but elsewhere some people had been forced out of production altogether. Mr Rockliff said that for the first time in 50 years I the Massey-Ferguson organisation had shown a loss in Australia this year. Towns dependent on the wheat industry were said to be like ghost towns today. Farms offered for sale in Queensland had not attracted a bid and he knew of a 150-acre dairy farm in his own district which had been sold recently for $29,000 after changing hands three years ago at $50,000. A matter for concern, he said, was what were known as tax farmers—doctors, businessmen and some big companies. It was said that a large company with big holdings in the north-east of Tasmania could in five years time produce enough lamb and beef for the state and have a surplus for export. These people were not interested in farming for farming’s sake but were concerned with reducing their taxes.

Mr Rockliff, who has a 170-acre mixed farm, was at Lincoln in 1965 and 1966, when he gained his diploma of agriculture. His wife, formerly Miss Geraldine Page, comes from' Christchurch.

On their small farm, Mr Rockliff said, oil or opium poppy growing was one of the enterprises enabling them to keep going. He had been growing this crop for the last two or three years and was now seeking to have about 30 acres in it. It was grown for a large commercial organisation, Glaxo-Allenburys. When Mr Rockliff started growing the poppy crop only 200 acres were being grown in the state. Last year the acreage was up to about 700 and this year there will be about 1500 acres, and ultimately 2500 acres. At first it was found difficult to persuade farmers to grow poppies but now they were eagerly seeking contracts. Tasmania had been chosen as the site for the industry because the crop could be more easily policed there. The crop was grown within a radius of about 50 miles of Devenport. An article in a recent issue of the “Tasmanian Journal of Agriculture” says that a condition of a licence to grow the crop (which is obtained from the Health Department) is that the

farmer must contract to sell his crop to an approved pharmaceutical firm. The harvested seed and capsules have to be delivered to approved storage premises as soon as possible after harvest. Mr Rockliff said the crop was spring sown, the aim being to get it in as soon as possible after August 1 for early germination. Until plants were about a foot high growth was relatively slow but thereafter they came away quite quickly and could grow as tall as 7ft. The poppy flowers varied from white to dark red in colour, including many different shades of purple. Until now crops had been sown with drills provided by the company but farmers were being encouraged to use their own equipment. As far as the farmer was concerned it was a relatively cheap crop to grow in that seed and sacks fbr the resultant crop were provided bfr the company and one of the few things that he had to provide was some fertiliser.

Inter-row cultivation had been important to■ keep weeds down, but for the first time last year spraying of weeds had been done commercially, with encouraging results.

Harvesting began towards the end of January and seed and the capsules containing the alkaloids so important to the pharmaceutical industry, particularly for morphine and codeine, were gathered in together. The average net return in the district last year had been about $lOO an acre. The crop was also harvested by the company, the farmer being charged $8.50 an acre.

A desirable feature was that the crop was not subject to international competition and at meetings with the company farmers had asked whether substitutes might be developed. Chemists had, however, said that

these were so expensive that further research on them was not warranted. Among the 60 to 70 acres of crop on Mr Rockliff’s farm are 10 acres of canning beans. Although beans were actually the most profitable crop at this stage it was likely that both their price and acreage would be reduced, he said. Mr Rockliff runs about 350 ewes for fat lamb production. He has normally had Border-Corriedale or Bor-der-Polworth ewes but in the last year has bought in 100 full-mouth Corriedale ewes with the idea of getting a lamb from them and then selling them again. He is lambing twice a ybar—some ewes lambing in late May and early June to provide income about September; and later more ewes lamb .to coincide with the spring growth when a better lambing percentage can be expected, but the return per lamb then is lower by about $2 or $3 a head.

Because of shipping difficulties between Tasmania and the mainland, lambs had been s.elling in Tasmania for about $7 each while in Melbourne for some time they had been bringing up to $ll each. Mr Rockliff said that ft cost about twice as much to send freight across Bass Strait as it did to send it from Christchurch to Melbourne. Where New Zealand was exporting primary produce to Australia, particularly vegetables, Mr Rockliff said he felt that the advantage this country had enjoyed had been in lower wage costs when Australian producers were just as efficient. But with the recent spate of wage increases here, he said, this advantage might decline. Mr Rockliff also runs 20 cows and calves on his farm. The beef market was still good, he said, but many Australians were wondering how long this would last.