MANY IDLE ACRES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 182, 1 May 1931, Page 10

MANY IDLE ACRES

How Chemist Could Help VALUE OF RESEARCH Industry’s Great Need Chemistry in its relation to the industrial welfare of New Zealand was the subject of an address by Mr. G. A. Irfiwrence, B.Sc., F.1.C., to the first meeting of the Wellington section of the newly-formed New Zealand Institute of Chemistry. Perhaps there never was any other time in the world’s history when the chemist was so needed as at present, said Mr. Lawrence. The countries of the world were looking to their scientists to help relieve the burden of depression. In New Zealand with the waning prices of primary products in the overseas markets and with increased foreign competition, it . was essential that we should use every endeavour to utilise our scientific resources to improve the quality of our products, increase production, seek new avenues for the utilisation of waste materials and Investigate new products. These were pre-eminently scientific problems and any curtailment of investigational work in this sphere would be a calamity. Idle Acres.

“We have in New Zealand many thousands of acres of what is now useless land, hilt there is no doubt that with the help of science this land will ultimately be brought into production,” said .Mr. Lawrence. “One still hears the old slogan ‘to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before’ used as if It were not an established achievement. One has only to consider the Waikato district as an example of what the application of science can do toward bringing poor land into-good production. Then again there is the Moutere district in Nelson, where the work of the Cawthron Institute is showing what can be done in apple production on poor land.

Value of Top-dressing. “But is the country deriving full benefit from what science has shown can be clone to make the soil more productive/ Much of our grazing country is still going back for want of fertilisers, and the more this is neglected the mor,e difficult and costly will be the task of restoration. No more glaring illustration of this is required than the figures in the Official Year Book dealing with top-dressing. In 192930 of a total of 17,000,000 acres in foreign grass only 13.5 per cent, was topdressed with fertiliser and only 2.1 per cent, was top-dressed with lime. If we add to this area in foreign grass the area still in native grass and tussock, then only 8.4 per cent, of the total was topdressed with fertiliser and lime. . “It has been said that to be British is to be conservative, but whatever, this lack of appreciation of the efficiency of topdressing is due it is certain that the landholder is losing money, the country is losing much-needed revenue from the increased exports which would, accrue, while the greatest tragedy of all is. that the national capital in the form of the inherent fertility of ■ the soils of this country is being dissipated for the want of more fertiliser. Then again far too little lime is being use in our agriculture generally. There seems to be a pernicious doctrine that if fertilisers are Used lime is unnecessary. Could anything be more fallacious?” 1 Mr. Lawrence said there was no royal road to research in. industry. The commercial man must not regard the chemist ns a magician who with the wave of a wand produced the required result. He must not expect that results could be made to order, as long, patient, and accurate work was often required to elucidate many problems, and nothing did more harm th'an for n scientist to be hustled for pot-boiling reports on investigations which were hurriedly carried out and immature.