NATIONAL FLAVOUR ABOUT AWARDS

Press, 22 December 1978, Page 7

NATIONAL FLAVOUR ABOUT AWARDS

Last week the names of the first recipients of awards from the Lincoln College Foundation, formed to mark the college’s centenary, were anlounced, A feature of the scheme s its national character. \t the launching of an appeal for support of the foundation in Christchurch last year, the chairman of the foundation trustees and also of the college council, Mr D. W. Bain, likened the awards envisaged to a miniature Nuffield scholarship scheme, and said that the idea was that it would return something to the nation for the assistance that the college had received from it in its first 100 years. So the first awards have oeen made, out of 35 applications from all parts of the country, to people in Otago and Wellington as well as in the college’s home province, and there are Massey and Auckland University graduates among them. They also cover a wide range of disciplines being made to a forester, an agronomist, a farmer and a deer research scientist. The forester is Mr H. H.

Levack, a senior forester in the New Zealand Forest Service in Wellington, the agronomist Mr C. J. Hayward, who works on Wrightson NMA Ltd’s Kimihia farm at Lincoln, the farmer Mr D. J. Davison, of Dunsandel, and the scientist Dr K. R. Drew, of the Invermay agricultural research centre near Dunedin. The trustees have allocated . $15,000 from their initial year’s income to help finance study and research . planned by the recipients of the awards when they travel overseas. Mr Davison, who is

aged 40 years, is an old boy of St Andrew’s College and completed a diploma of agriculture at Lincoln College. He has been farming for 10 years. The property of 356 ha carries about 3500 stock units.

On very light plains land, he has recently embarked on an extensive spray irrigation development programme. He is chairman of a group of eight farmers in the Te Pirita district which owns plant and machinery worth about $30,000 and employs a manage r-tractor driver who does most of the cultivation on their properties.

While in Britain he will study farm machinery and other farm co-operatives and land tenure. Chairman of the Dunsandel branch of Federated Farmers, Mr . Davison is also a member of the provincial executive of North Canterbury Federated Farmers.

Outside farming he has been a prominent sportsman. He has played Rugby for Canterbury, . MidCanterbury, New Zealand Universities, the Junior All Blacks and New Zealand Colts (under 23 years). He has also represented Canterbury at athletics and one of his most notable performances was the winning of the New Zealand 220 yards junior title.

The foundation trustees believe that in the face of the massive escalation in the costs of farm machinery in recent years increasing attention will have to be directed to machinery sharing and syndication. They consider that Mr Davison’s experience to date will be greatly enhanced by his proposed studies in the United Kingdom, where machinery syndication is highly developed. Mr Hayward is a graduate of Massey University and his work currently involves the assessment and evaluation of pasture, for--age and amenity plant varieties. He has also initiated evaluation programmes for oil seed crops and recently for

high yield crops, such as fodder beet, for energv farming.

His studies next year will take him to the United States. United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark, to public and private plant breeding institutions, agricultural universities and leading commercial seed companies.

Referring to Mr Hayward’s award, the trustees say that they believe work in this field being undertaken by commercial organisations will strongly' complement the work of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in the evaluation of overseas plant varieties. The potential for the multiplication and reexport of the seed of varieties also appeared to be considerable and would widen the opportunities for arable farmers in thenfarm management systems.

Dr Drew holds a master of agricultural science degree from Lincoln and a doctorate of philosophy from Cornell University in

the United States. He is playing a leading role in research associated with New Zealand’s developing deer farming industry. He will be visiting the United States and Britain in the course of his studies.

The other award winner. Mr Levack, holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Auckland and also a "bachelor of science degree in forestry from the University of Aberdeen.

For the last three years he has been working on the planning of national . and regional forestry development and is a member of the Forestry Council’s committee on

national forestrv development planning.' Mr Levack plans to spend two months, mainly in Oslo, studying Scandinavian methods of modelling alternative forestrv sector strategies using the systems dynamics method. This is as a background for preparing a New Zealand forestry sector plan. He will also be making short visits to forestry sector planners in the United

States and United Kingdom. The foundation trustees says they are pleased that the interests of the applicants cover a wide range of investigations and they believe that each man can make a worthwhile contribution to the advancement of the country’s agricultural and related interests, which was the objective laid down by the college when it established the foundation.