USE OF FERTILISERS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 7, 19 December 1932, Page 11

USE OF FERTILISERS

ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE. INCREASING PRODUCTION. Auckland, Dec. 17. “With prices for agricultural products at low levels, it is only the intensive fanner who can expect to obtain a profit from the land,” said Lieu-tenant-Colonel G. P. Pollitt a director of Imperial Chemical Industries, Limited, yesterday. He is in Auckland in the course of a world business tour. The use of artificial fertilisers, he said, was imperative for the development of intensive farming, and he had been pleased to notice that New Zealand farmers generally were alive to the position.

“During a month in New Zealand, 1 have ample proof that the best farmmers are fully alive to the advisability of increasing production by the use of nitrogenous fertilisers,” Colonel Pollitt said. “Our sales are increasing, and but for the prevailing depression' they would be better still. In New Zealand, nitrogenous fertilisers must, of course, be used in conjunction with superphosphate, and the Dominion is singularly fortunate in having access to the phosfhate deposits of Nauru and Ocean stands.

“The operations of Government research workers and private experimenters in the use of fertilisers nave had a marked educative effect, and are bound to prove of the greatest value in the future. They have shown that it is possible to make a small farm a paying proposition, find it is through the small farms and the small, intensive farmers that the great agricultural countries of the world have grown. “The only farmer who can live at anywhere near to-day’s price levels is the intensive farmer, who produces the maximum possible yield from a relatively small number of acres. The intensive farmer is definitely taking the place of the large landholder. It is a tendency which must extend and in New Zealand there can be seen a distinct movement in this direction.

“Small farm schemes have many points to commend them, but perhaps the greatest is that the small area, intensively farmed, is one of the most potent factors in modern agricultural developments. Artificial fertilisers have already proved themselves, as much in New Zealand as in any other country, and in any small farm scheme their importance should not be overlooked.”