Five-farm tour highlight of big conference

Press, 30 August 1985, Page 11

Five-farm tour highlight of big conference

Conference goers from all over New Zealand will be shown how water plays such an important part in Canterbury agriculture during the main field day for next week’s big Institute of Agricultural Science conference. Five visits have been arranged for the field day, on Wednesday, and the programme will contain much of interest to everyone.

The first stop is at the Irwell farm of Mr John Lay, the well known arable crop specialist and Lincoln

College lecturer. Sprinkler irrigation on heavy land and the economics of continuous cereal cropping will be among the topics discussed. Second stop is at Lake Ellesmere where Dr lan Linehan, of the North Canterbury Catchment Board, and Dr Brent Cowie, a fisheries consultant, will lead a discussion on wildlife, fisheries, lake control and the impact of farming on the lake. The third visit will be to the new Tentburn farm of the New Zealand Salmon Company, near the mouth of the Rakaia River, where the general manager of the company, Mr Tony Crowe, will speak. The construction of the farm to house six million salmon fry has taken 3500 cubic metres of concrete.

The fourth visit will be to the 173 ha dairy farm of Tony and Shirley Thomas, North Rakaia, which is heading into its third season with 420 cows. The farm is automatic border-dyked and the production target for this season is 62,000 kg of butterfat.

The last stop will be the intensive cropping farm of Colin and Jocelyn Lili, near Methven, which is presently growing 81ha of wheat, lOha of barley, 49ha of lentils, 37ha of ryegrass seed, 41ha of white clover, 12ha of cocksfoot, lOha of prairie grass and sha of oats. The theme of the big conference is “water” and several sessions during the week will deal with this topic.

On Monday afternoon at Lincoln College the conference will be opened by the Parliamentary undersecretary for agriculture, Mr David Butcher, and other speakers in that session will be Professor John Burton, an expert on water resource planning; the judge of the Planning Tribunal which recently ruled on the Rakaia River, Judge P. R. Skelton; and the directors of the Agricultural Engineering Institute, Dr Terry

Heiler, and the Centre for Resource Management, Dr John Hayward. Another general session on Tuesday morning will hear from speakers on climate, ecology, landscape design and farm management all connected with irrigation.

Specialists in soil physiology, water uptake by crops and horticultural irrigation will speak at the third general session, on Thursday morning. At other times during the week the conference will contain specialist sessions for agronomists, horticulturists, meteorologists, irrigators, plant physiologists, soil scientists and a course in communications run by the Guild of Agricultural Journalists. Thursday and Friday next week will also see a seminar on fodder trees being run by the Tree Crops Association.

Several top-flight speakers have been arranged for this seminar, which the organisers claim will give Canterbury sheep farmers the knowledge to go about drought-proofing their property. The I.A.S. conference brings together agricultural scientists from all over New Zealand and it moves from campus to campus each year. It is a good opportunity to hear the latest in research from the agricultural scientists and farmers are well advised to attend.