Reasonable wheat yield

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32553, 12 March 1971, Page 13

Reasonable wheat yield

The general picture of wheat yields in the harvest that has just been completed is of results somewhat tower than had looked possible early in the season before the NovemberDecember dry spell—probably about 10 bushels tower than at that stage—but still reasonably good in comparison with the poor results of the previous season. and back up again to around the 50 bushels to the acre mark. In fact in Ashburton county in a survey of around 5000 acres Mr C. P. Whatman, senior farm advisory officer of the Department of Agriculture in that area, reports an average of more than 52 bushels- to the acre'. This, he says, might be a little on the high side for the whole area but does indicate that a 50-bushel average was achieved in the district, which is about 12 bushels better than in the previous drought season. In other areas there is also a similar story of yields being below early expectations. In the northern part of South Canterbury Mr W. A. McKellar, a farm advisory officer at Timaru, spoke this week of an average of about 50 bushels in the Geraldine county and 45 bushels in the Levels county. Mr McKellar said that when conditions were dry at the flowering time for wheat, as occurred this year, it seemed that yields were lower. In the area between the Rakaia and Waimakariri Mr R. G. Jolly, of the department in Christchurch, said this week that the yield would be about the 50 bushels mark, which although below expectations, was a considerable improvement on last year and getting back to about the level of earlier yields of the crop.

In North Canterbury yields are still being worked out for the season. In both Mid-Canterbury and the northern part of South Canterbury a continuing farmer preference i for Arawa as a variety to grow as compared with Aotea has been noticed. Mr Whatman said that an interesting feature of the latest harvest had been the' good performance of Arawa, the reasonably good performance of Hilgendorf, which bad been much better than in recent, years, and the relatively poor performance of Aotea. One would expect the area of Arawa to increase in the coming year, Mr Whatman said. Mr Whatman said that crops like barley and linseed had also yielded reasonably well in his district, but not so good as appeared possible at one stage. In the Levels county and the dry parts of Geraldine county Mr McKellar said that barley yields would be just average, but under better moisture conditions yields had been reasonably good. Further north Mr Jolly said that barley had possibly not done as well as wheat relatively—there seemed to be more rejections mainly because of screenings. Mr Jolly said that while yields of oats had been quite good and probably around the 60 bushels mark, there had been oat and barley crops on light land in the write-off category. Peas had been highly variable in Mid-Canterbury, Mr Whatman said, depending on the moisture situation in the area they were in and on the stage that they were at when they were hit by the NovemberDecember dry spell. Overall they would be about average. Mr McKellar said that further south there had been a few good crops but far too many poor crops from which farmers would not be making much money. However, due to being grown in selected areas and harvested in rotation depending on the soils they were grown on Mr McKellar said that it had been a good season for process peas. In this northern South Canterbury area Mr McKellar also reported that the potato crop looked to be about an average one and linseed yields to be quite good overall. While on medium to light land Mr Jolly said that white clover had been affected by the NovemberDecember spell, there had, however, been some excellent yields in his district—a few yielding four sacks of machine dressed seed to . the acre and quite a sprinkling in the three sacks range. White ryegrass seed yields had been fairly light with a lot of light seed being harvested, Mr Jolly said that indications were that germination was satisfactory.

Mr Jolly said that vining peas under irrigation and also seed peas grown under irrigation had done well, but crops without water had suffered.