Harsh realities of farming ‘on top of a Mount Cook’

Press, 29 August 1980, Page 13

Harsh realities of farming ‘on top of a Mount Cook’

Tibet, the forbidden land, recently allowed in a group of scientists. Among them was Dr Peter Wardle, of the D.S.I.R. Botany Division, Christchurch, and an “accompanying person,” his wife, Margaret. This is the third article of a series in ivhich they trill give their impressions of this mysterious and largely inaccessible country.

While travelling across southern Tibet, we glimpsed a way of farming very different from that of New Zealand. Our introduction to it was at the Institute of Agronomy, near Lhasa, which was founded in 1960. On 110 hectares, research on improving the traditional Tibetan crops and introducing new ones is being carried out. We saw winter' wheat, potatoes, rape, broad beans, onions, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, sugar beet; and under polythene, tomato, cucumber, peppers, and

egg plant. Apples, pears, and peaches thrive in the experimental orchard. It may .seem strange that such varied crops can be grown here, at the height of Mount . Cook, even granted that the latitude is subtropical. However, the severity of the winter is balanced by a reliable growing season, with a June temperature averaging 15.5 C —• the same as Christchurch in December.,

The best croplands lie below 4000 metres, and depend on irrigation. The staples are barley and wheat, which in early June were not yet in ear. At this time, fields were being weeded and cultivated by hand, though some communes have machinery such as headerharvesters. Little Chinesemade tractors are much in evidence.

In the higher reaches of the valleys, sparse crops of barley grow on stony fields, and sometimes the stones, have been gathered

to build small shrines, in accordance with religious tradition. Many fields are virtually on stony flood plains, like that bf the Waimakariri, being protected from the river by groynes.

Barley is also grown on man-made terraces with stone retaining walls, that ascend stream fans and the sides of gullies to as high as 4700 metres — reputedly the highest limit of . agriculture in . the world. ’

Along the rivers, there are also green, closelybrowsed meadows dotted with tiny gentians and primroses, that provide grazing for tiny, long-hair-ed goats, black-faced sheep, cattle, and, above 4000 metres, yaks. The yak is a species of cattle confined to Tibe.t and the inner valleys of the Himalayas, that provides milk, cheese, fibre, meat, leather, and dung for cooking, as well as being a beast of burden. The stony plains and

rocky mountainsides beyond the reach of irrigation support sparse vegetation of short grass, unpalatable legumes, and spiny shrubs, in keeping with a rainfall about the same as that of Central Otago. Sheep and goats graze here, and we saw large flocks of sheep and the black tents of nomadic herdsmen on bleak plateaux more than 5000 metres above sea level. Fuel and timber are in short supply through most of Tibet. Yak dung is dried on the walls of houses, and brushwood is gathered and dried on the flat roofs — juniper is favoured, but sources are usually remote. Yet, willows and poplars planted along streams grow vigorously when protected from stock, and many other kinds of tree have been planted for amenity at Lhasa and Shigatse. It seemed to us that there is a great deal of scope for silvicultural research and forestry in Tibet. . We travelled mainly through the semi-arid valleys of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, which form the Tibetan heartland. Our exit to Nepal, however, was through the Himalayas via the densely forested gorge of the Bhote Kosi River. This is more like the valleys of eastern Tibet, which descend as low as 200 metres, and where maize and even rice are grown.