N.Z. GRASSLANDS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 210, 18 August 1933, Page 6

N.Z. GRASSLANDS

I MEETING OF ASSOCIATION PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. ADDRESS BY MR. A. H. COCKAYNE “This, the second meeting of the New Zealand Grassland Association, takes place at perhaps the most momentous period in the history of New Zealand grassland development,” said Mr. A. H. Cockayne in his presidential address to the conference of the association which opened in Christchurch on Tuesday. As Mr. Cockayne was unable to be present owing to illness he delivered his address into a microphone at his bedside in his home at Wellington. Mr. Cockayne summarised the various stages of grassland development in New Zealand. “The first phase,” he said, “was represented by the exploitation of the natural grasslands of New Zealand. The second phase represented the replacement of natural units of vegetation by artificially-pro-duced grassland, largely without, ploughing, which was originally viewed essentially as a prelude to development along the line of arable farming extension. “The third phase was the recognition that our climate, under natural conditions essentially a rain forestproducing one, is therefore particularly adapted for the artificial development of permanent high-producing ‘wetstock’ grassland. It is this recognition that has in the past definitely moulded the major agricultural policy of New Zealand along the line of grassland farming, and more and more along the line of the most intensive type of grassland farming, namely, the production and utilisation of permanently milk-producing pastures, the term ‘wetstock’ grassland being equivalent to milk-producing pastures. Thus the dairy cow, the ewe, and the sow represent in our intentional development the essential elaborating ma, chinery for our grass crop, and butterfat and rapidly-maturing meat the essential products. “It has been on this basis that our grassland potentialities have been framed. The extension of milk-pro-ducing pastures to their utmost and their utilisation to their utmost has become the established major agricultural intention of New Zealand. The recognition that the possibilities ahead of scientifically directed grassland management were extensive has virtually become stereotyped into two current expressions — ‘we have only scratched the surface,’ and ‘external markets are limitless,’ the last one, indeed, having become more circumscribed into ‘Great Britain can consume all that we can produce.’ ” The acceptance of these two statements had unfortunately tended towards the capitalisation, largely with borrowed money, of our grassland potentialities well ahead of their realisation. This was of no moment if easily realisable expansion was allowed, but would otherwise be serious and would necessitate considerable modification of our agricultural policies. GENERAL REVIEW NECESSARY. It was the questioning that the practical potentialities of full grassland production were greater than the practical potentialities for consumption that necessitated a review of our grass farming concepts, and particularly a wider outlook on the part of all investigational and research grassland workers than was the case when the statement went unquestioned. For this reason he viewed this present meeting of grassland workers as being of particular significance and importance. “I think that the rather world-wide conception that agricultural production —that is, production essentially concerned with foodstuffs — should be curtailed rather than expanded, is basically unsound so far as the welfare of humanity is concerned, and that a conception which is basically unsound cannot be permanently integrated into civilisation,” said Mr. Cockayne. “It may, however, be necessary purely as a temporary measure for it to bo adopted for the special purpose of creating scarcity as a preclude to the necessity of again furthering expansion. But even this looks to be a clumsy method of approach. “The necessity for better grassland knowledge, better and increasing grassland research that will lead to better efficiency in grassland management, remains of paramount importance,” said Mr. Cockayne. “What is now needed is the getting down to the real fundamentals, both individual and national, of efficiency in grassland management, rather than assuming, to the extent that has been done in the past, that volume increase is essentially the index whereby efficiency should be measured. “One feels, however, that under semi-developed conditions such as largely exist in New Zealand, increased efficiency automatically means a larger increase in production, but that is a matter for investigation. Just what constitutes individual and national grassland management efficiency, either separately or in combiner tion or co-operation in the light of a definite rather than an expanding output, certainly seems to me a philosophical economic problem on which we should have definite knowledge and which should more or less control the development of research progress and be equally applicable under expansion. For this reason I view the deliberations of the economic section of this conference as of particular importance to the conference as a whole.” Mr. Cockayne emphasised the close connexion that should be maintained between research on the one hand and instruction on the other, and the necessity for research to be translatable into what was really practical and not theoretical instruction. He had rather the feeling that grassland re search tended to become in its progress too often directed more and more towards the science concerned than to the art into which it must be incorporated if rapid practical translation was to be secured. THEORY AND PRACTICE. “One feels that soil surveys, for example,, must be extremely valuable,”

he said, “but one has not one’s mind clear as to just what function they are to perform in linking with actual grassland practice leading to improvement. It appears to me that since at the conference. there will be both research and instructional workers present, it will afford a good opportunity for discussion leading to the deciding of just how such surveys should bo developed so that they can exert a really practical influence or practical control over, oh the one hand, research work carried out by others than chemists or geologists, and on the other, over the instructional work in the direction of making such work more practically reliable. For this reason a discussion of pasture analysis as a guide, if it is a guide, to pasture practice by the farmer is also worthy of consideration. One feels that with both these points, the position at the present time is largely experimental, but there may be some real application that could be practically adopted for the furtherance of improvement in grassland management.”