WHAT “SUNDOWNER” HEARS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 69, 5 March 1930, Page 11

WHAT “SUNDOWNER” HEARS

A resident of Otahuhu, Mr D, H. Clarkson, claims to have discovered a way of destroying blackberry. Mr Clarkson, who is an engineer, has been experimenting for about two years. He uses a spray with a solution oi fertiliser in varying degrees of strength He claims that in addition to destroying blackberry, which takes from one to three applications, according to the size and strength of the bushes, be has successfully eradicated Batburst burr and Calitorniaii thistle, while prickly pear which has been treated bus dissolved. leaving only the fibre. Seven days after spraying, said Mr Clark son, the blackberry Was ready for burning off, and alter that had been done the spray was applied to the roots. Some roots he had sprayed he had sent away, including one which had not shown life for 18 months.

An experiment in connection with the back to-the-land movement is to be tried by the Rural Vocational lieague during the present month. Tills is a summer camp for lads who, it is hoped, will be interested in farming It is to be,held at Canterbiny Agricultural College, Lincoln, and the facilities of tbe college have been placed at tbo disopsal of those organising the camp. Not much practical work is to be attempted in the first year, but it is hoped that later practical work will be carried out and the boys will be shown how they can make themselves useful and worth any farmer employing them The proposal is being well supported. as there are in Christchurch many lads willing to take up country work but who cannot milk or do any of the things which a boy is expected

to do as soon as he goes on to a farm, and the league is aiming to make such lads employable.

Everything points to the need for more systematic and positive methods of breeding and rearing fat cattle. Nov only do the “plain’’ cattle bring loss to the rearer, but disappointment to the tedder. They bring more disappointment and loss than low price-, in best stock, because, being less thrifty, they cost more to rear and feed. Besides this, the presence of so many cattle of poor quality, both stores and fat, on the market tend to depress prices all round, and to drag down the prices of best quality cattle, so that it is nut onlv tbe owner of “plain’’ cattle that suffers, but those who endeavour to reach the highest prices by supplying what the public want. There is only one course for the man on the right lines to follow, and that is to as at present—breed and feed the best But it is highly annoying to him to find his market so often “scotched” bv inferior stock. Aftei all, bad stock get into the meat shops, and eventually finds the oven of the consumer. If badly-bred and badly-fed meat continually pushes out the better quality joint, as it ceitainly does among certain classes of the community, it is bound to get some kind of a limit upon the demand for the best

The Argentine and Uruguay alone have together an estimated cattle population of about 45,000,000—three to four times the number in Great Britain and Ireland, nearly three times the number in Australia and New Zealand, and about two-thirds the numboi of cattle in the United States and Canada together. On the basis of these figures they could feed the whole of England from their .surplus after feeding their own 12,000.000 people, even allowing that Argentines eat more beef than any other people in the world.