It’s Tough Up There

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32381, 21 August 1970, Page 16

It’s Tough Up There

Canterbury and New Zealand farmers do not know drought by Australian standards. A North Canterbury reader has sent in a cutting from a recent edition of the “Sydney Morning Herald.” The reader says that she thought it might be of interest to farmers in general. “We think we are going through a rough patch!" A representative of the Sydney newspaper had been in Moree in northwestern New South Wales, where he said the farmers talk about rain all day and dream about it at night Mr Bill Lloyd, the Mayor of Moree, was quoted as saying that millions of sheep would die if the drought continued much longer. Fanners could not afford to hand feed at present prices so that they would have to let them die.

It costs about $8 an acre i to prepare and sow land with wheat Mr Lloyd had i 2500 acres under the crop but if there was no good rain this could be almost a write-off. Out in the huge paddocks 40 miles north of Moree a plume of dust marked the passage of Mr Bill Boak's tractor. He was said to be i spending the day gambling. He was sowing wheat “dry” in ,the desperate hope that rain would come before the seed rotted in the black earth. He had 2300 acres wheat “I think what I am doing today is probably a waste of time,” he said. “But I am taking a chance. Wheat won’t grow in the bag you know . . Mr Gordon Kirby, who runs the Success Poll Hereford stud at Moree, said that a million sheep had died there in 1966-67 and this could easily happen again. He said he had been

selling stud rams and ewes to the Moree abattoir at $3 each. Some of these animals would have fetched $5OO to $lOOO a year or two ago when prices were good. It is estimated that pastoralists are hand feeding nearly 750,000 lambing ewes in the area. But a Department of Agriculture officer said that after lambinf 50 per cent of the pastoralists would stop hand feeding and the lambs Would die. “The situation is getting worse, hut it is difficult to see what can be done,” he said. “One man I know planted 400 acres of oats for winter, feed at a cost of $5 an acK. It all failed.”