Autumn Brings Rich Harvests Of Cereal Crops

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 65, 9 December 1938, Page 21 (Supplement)

Autumn Brings Rich Harvests Of Cereal Crops

But Agriculture Is Subsidiary To Stock Raising

MOTORISTS who drive across the New Zealand countryside in autumn will see, ripening in the sunshine, nodding and rippling in the warm breezes, golden acres of wheat, waving delicate oats, barley and maize and hops. The roadside fields will be busy with the reaper-and bindcis and all the machinery of harvest; the scent of petrol will mingle with the warm, dusty aroma of hay: the brown stooks will stand row and row like the stacked muskets of a bivouacked army. It will be clear to the traveller that though New Zealand's wealth is mainly pastoral, her agricultural interests are broad also.

Indeed, in Canterbury, Otago, Southland, parts of the Wairarapa and Hawke's Bay. and other sun-baked plains, it would be easy during harvest time to believe New Zealand's agricultural future great. Indeed, those particular areas have proved well suited to cereal production. However, in the economic development of the country, it has been shown that agriculture is naturally limited to supplying in part the cereal needs of the community, and to supplementing the supplies of fodder for the farmers' stock.

Wheat is, of course, the most important cereal grown in New Zealand, but at present the Dominion can supply only a part of the country’s needs, and imports average about 250,000 bushels yearly. That is not much, however, when compared with the past Dominion yield of 9,000,000 bushels in a good year. The average annual consumption of wheat is, however, only 8,376.000 bushels; in many years production does actually reach this figure, and importations from Australia are not needed. New Zealand requires 6.290.000

bushels of wheat a year for grinding into flour, 410.000 bushels as the seed of next year’s crops, and 1,676.000 bushels for poultry food, pig food, and similar general purposes.

To further the interests of wheat-growers, a cooperative research association, the Wheat Research Institute. with headquarters at Christchurch, has been set up by the wheat-growers, millers, master bakers, and grain merchants of the Dominion, in conjunction with the Government Departments of Scientific and Industrial Research and of Agriculture. It is financed bv a levy of 14d. per ton of wheat or flour sold bv the farmer, ground by the miller, or bought bv the baker, with a pound-for-pound Government subsidy.

The institute possesses a plant-breeding station attached to Lincoln Agricultural College, where yieid trials are carried out. newly introduced species tested, and the breeding and selection of grain carried out to improve the quality of the grain and the resultant flour. In addition, it runs a laboratory in Christchurch where experimental milling is carried out. and chemical. physical, mill ng and baking tests are carried out under actual commercial conditions. Considerable research into the factors affecting the quality of the loaf is carried out at the laboratory.

Next to wheat, oats are the most important cereal grown in the Dominion, principally for stock fodder. Whereas the total acreage of wheat planted yearly averages 250.000 acres, the areas in oats amount to about 360,000 acres. Canterbury grows 87 per cent, of the Dom’nion's wheat ; with Otago and Southland she grows 87 per cent, of all oats. Canterbury alone produces just halt of all grain grown in the Dominion. Most of the oat crop is cut for chaff without threshing. while of the threshed portion the straw is used for hay or ensilage. The area laid down yearly under turnips, mainly in the South Island, greatly exceeds the acreage planted with either oats or wheat. Turnips are used as winter feed for sheen in areas where snnnlies of grass are at

best seasonal. The advantage of these root crops is that they can be eaten without the expenditure of anv labour other than in fencing them. They have al Co sufficient leguminous value to bulk out chaff and meatmeal feeding before lambing, when green grass is unavailable.

However, a marked feature of agriculture in rhe past 10 years has been the great increase in area of the grassland, clover, and lucerne crops put down to hay ot ensilage. The area has doubled in that period. Other important crops are potatoes, barley, maize, peas, linseed, mangolds and hops, rape and kale, and New Zealand flax. The latter is grown both for export and for the New Zealand rope and twine and wool-sack industries.

Mechanization of agriculttire has resulted in increased efficiency in recent years. Only in the last decade has the tractor almost universally superseded the draught-horse team. Modern harvesting machinery, too. has cut the cost of bringing in the crops, and increased the chances of harvesting during tine wea’iict by enabling night harvesting by floodlight to be carried. out.

Such is the fertility of the soil that, with judicious management, exceptionally heavy crops can lie obtained. Rich Canterbury farmlands have yielded 90 to 100 bushels to the acre of wheat or oats, the average yield being up to two tons per acre. With turnips. 70 tons, and with mangolds 90, have been raised on an acre of land. Maize, grown in the Hawke's Bay and Auckland districts, yields about 74 tons to the acre, potatoes five to six tons.

.Agriculture, then, remains essentially subsidiary to the table and to pastoral production, with a few specialized crops such as hops, flax, tobacco providing for the needs of certain factory industries. In the future this is likely to remain the general trend of development. with perhaps a slight increase in the quantities of wheat grown, and throughout an intensification of productive efficiency.