Faced with sowing three times

Press, 6 October 1978, Page 8

Faced with sowing three times

Mr J. K. Lay, of Irwell, is one farmer who is in the position of having to sow the same area of land three times this season because of crops being drowned out.

He initially sowed 20 ha of wheat, of which 15 ha was washed out and this he resowed. Now he is f-ced with resowing that 15 ha again, but he said this week that particularly because of the discount on Karamu it would now be going into barley instead.

In his two wheat sowings Mr Lay said he spent about $lOOO on seed and ' ; rtiliser — fertiliser was sown when the 15 ha was resown — and in addition f ere were cultivation costs.

Quite apart from the fact that there was a lot of water lying around this season, he s.-.id that a critical factor had been where heavy rain followed soon after sowing. Thus in the case of the 5 ha, which had survived, it had more than a week (about 10 to 15 days) in the ground after sowing before it rained, but the other sowings had been followed almost immediately by heavy rain.

With the water table at a high level and only a few points of rain needed to make the ground wet again, Mr Lay is concerned about what is going to happen to the spring cropping programme.