FEEDING THE SOIL

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12254, 9 April 1935, Page 2

FEEDING THE SOIL

VIEWS OP FERTILISER EXPERT WONDERFUL RESULTS ON POOR COUNTRY .• . ..... - •* ■ y • BUT THE BETTER THE GROUND, THE BETTER THE RESULTS •GREAT ' SCOPE UN POVERTY BAY The address on “Fertilisers” delivered at the Rotary Club yesterday by Mr A. Alexander, of Messrs Kempthorpe, Prosser and Co.’s staff, was listened to with very great interest, Rotarian Quigley being in the chair. Incidentally, Mr Alexander quoted a number of wonderful results that had .followed the ose of superphosphate on poor soils. In one case in the Marton district 1100 ewes had been fattened on 150 acres and the owner did not regard himself as a skilled farmer, as lie was only a butcher. As regards the Poverty Bay district, Mr Alexander .said that undoubtedly it contained a lot of excellent soil and the district ishould have been called “Providence Bay". It was, however, a mistake for anyone to suppose that the district was not deteriorating m productive capacity. Year a,fter year ewes up to- 5 and .6 years were sent away to the Waikato where on the pumice land fortified by 'superphosphate they increased by half in .size in six months. Mr Alexander went on to say that he had seen land in this district which, had changed hands in the boom days at £l5O per acre. Today it was valued at £SO per acre, but be did not think it was worth on its present capacity more than £ls per acre. .Ho had also seen a lot of poor land here which would readily respond to the use of fertiliser. There were amazing instances ol' good and bad farm management in Poverty Bay. He had seen a paddock of rve-grass and or white clover which could not he beaten anywhere but “over the fence”, as it were, the pastures were very poor. In some parts, he had noticed what had once no doubt been good pasture, hut it was now turning to. danthonia. and there was only one worse nuisance—fern. There was room for great expansion of production in Poverty Bay and on the Coast and it should not be necessary to send stock away to. be fattened. If the fattening were done here, it would help the .freezing industry and there would be no necessity to cry out for a railway for that facility, in the event of which he spoke, could not be kept back. In the course of his general remarks, Mr Alexander said that 60 years ago the fertiliser industry started in a comparatively small way at Burnside, near Dunedin, in a factory taken over by Messrs Ivempthorne, Prosser, and Co. who, at that time, commenced the manufacture of superphosphate. Progress was slow, as roost of the country was then only in the breaking-in stage and settlers had the great advantage of natural fertility, accumulated throughout the centuries, to work on. At that time, agriculture was wholly a practical problem, involving the felling of bush, draining of swamps, and breaking in of tussock land. The grass that followed these operations wa s supposed to carry the stcck available and there was no need to pay any attention to intensive methods such as we understand them to-day. GREATEST CONTRIBUTION TO AGRICULTURE In the older countries of the where the land was c.lorely settled, and where centuries of production had depleted the land of some of its productivity, scientists had for a century been at work investigat : ng ways and means; of restoring fertility H:o the soil. Strange as it might appear, an English and a. German scientist had tackled the problem about the same time but without knowledge of each other’s methods. The German war, carrying out experiments with hone dust and the Britisher with rock phosphate. An extraordinary echo was that the Gcr- 1 man accused the Englishman of buying up all the bones on the old battlefields of Europe for use n,~y a fertiliser! Undoubtedly the first really great contribution they made to agriculture was superphosphate. From that time onward, science played an increasingly important part in agriculture and the result is that .success in farming no. longer depends upon h man’s ability to swing an axe or i work a plough, hut to his capacity to apply business-like methods and make full use of the many artificial aids to production. A NATIONAL, ASSET The extent to which the fertiliser industry has assisted in the development of this Dominion was already well understood, he added, but the extent of the industry itself was not generally known. At present, theio were eight factories manufacturing superphosphate and allied fertilisers, and these factories were now turning out in the aggregate about 350,C00 tons a, year. These factories were financed and controlled entirely within the Dominion. The capital invested amounted to about £1,500,000, and the annual wages paid out was about £300,000, or approximately 16/por ton of fertiliser sold. In addition to the manfaeturing plants, there were numerous mixing plants operating in different parts of the Dominion, and these, together with the transport services utilised, made a substantial contribution to the wages bill. The principal product of the manufacturing plants was sup erphosphato, probably 65 per cent, of all fertilising materials sold within the Dominion being superphosphate, i The raw materials used for the production of superphosphate hay to he imported into N.Z. The phosphate rock came from Nauru, and Ocean Island, the sulphur from Texas or Japan, and the nitrates from Chile. Prior to the Great War, Nauru belonged to Germany and Ocean Island to Britain. On the outbreak of war, Australia sent a gun-boat and captured Nauru. It was a lucky move, for fhe next morning, a .Tap-

amese war vessel arrived on a similar errand, but retired. To-day, both, Islands .were under the control of Britain, and it was estimated that there, was sufficient phosphate on the islands to last for 200 years. In the factory, the phosphate rock was ground to a fine powder and, later, mixed with sulphuric acid, which had also been prepared on the spot, thus producing readily available phosphoric acid in the • form of superphosphate. WHAT SUPERPHOSPHATE CAN DO A general, and in places detailed, survey of New Zealand soils revealed a. deficiency of phosphates and this deficiency coul'd be .supplied" only by adding further supplies to the soil. This was usually best done by adding superphosphate alone or in combination with lime. In the early days of settlement in this Dominion it was found that Ntiture had clothed the land with the sort of covering or crop most appropriate to the soil or climate; there were areas of bush, areas of manuka, areas of fern and areas of tussock. “To-day,” he isaitl, “we scarcely regard the original classification, simply because we have at our disposal the means •of levelling out -differences of soil also differences of climate. Superphosphate has raised the capacity of fern land to the stage where it is now carrying more stock and producing more meat and bu.tter.fjat per acre than some of the host hush land. In The same way, it is possible to extend the growing season and shorten the winter period by the judicious use of fertilisers. This Dominion, has over ,thc last few years exported overseas upwards of 460,000 tons of primary produce annually, and it is no exaggeration to say that that huge tonnage of meat, wool, and dairy produce could never have been attained, and cannot now he sustained. without superphosphate. BUTTERFAT NOW RECKONED BY . THE ACRE “Dairy farms carrying one boast and producing up to 3001 b. of butterfat per acre are- by no means uncommon where proper use is made of fertilisers. On sheep farms, up to •six or seven ewes per acre all the year round are being carried on land that naturally grew fern and a- poor sort of scrub, but which now carries ryegrass as the result of a regular topdressing programme. Matamata, in the Thames Valley, takes about 12.000 tons of fertilisers each year, and several other towns on the Waikato side take in over 10,000 tons a year. Not only in increased carrying capacity and increased production are the effects of superphosphate felt, hut it is particularly apparent in ihe health of stock. A PRESSING NEED IN POVERTY BAY “There is here a common idea that the land is .so good that it does not require fertilisers. Whilst 1 am prepared to admit that I have seen here some pastures and crops that are little, if anything, short of perfection, I have seen some that have much to he desired. As a general rule the better the land, the better the results from fertiliser, but it is also a fact that the lighter the land the more obvious are the results from feriliser treatment. The signs here are decidedly encouraging and the room for improvement .so great that I predict a much more widespread use of fertilisers in Poverty Bay in the years ahead. It is only a matter of finding exactly what is most suitable for the soil conditions here and making continuous efforts to develop a. fertiliser sense.” To the speaker a hearty vote of thanks was accorded on the motion of Rotarian 11. Kenway, who said that, as a sheepfarmer, he -cordially agreo'.l with the main principles that had been enunciated in the address. As far as the properties which he worked were concerned, from 50 to 100 tons of fertiliser were used every year. He did not agree, however, with the contention that the soil could ever again he brought back to its original richness.