FARMING NOTES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 304, 21 November 1934, Page 5

FARMING NOTES.

RURAL RAKINGS. The Poverty Bay branch of the Farmers’ Union has decided to urge that a referendum of farmers should be taken before the lifting of the embargo on the importation of live stock was considered by the Government.

Sales of wool in the chief selling centres of Australia from July 1 to October 31 totalled 603,434 bales, which realised £7,628,912. These totals, compared with the corresponding period last year, show decreases of 211,139 bales in quantity, and £6,939,619 in value. The average price, greasy and scoured, during the four months, was 9.6 d a lb, compared with 13.9 d a lb a year ago. The world’s exports of chilled beef in 1933, which exceeded 400,000 tons, came almost entirely from Argentina, which furnished about 85 per cent of the whole in that year, the bulk of the 1 balance being supplied by Uruguay (7 per cent) and Brazil (6 per cent). British Empire countries, ; mainly Southern Rhodesia, exported 7000 | tons of chilled beef in 1933, or nearly. 2 per 'cent of the world’s exports. ' Steady rain which set in early yesterday afternoon, following closely on the torrential downpour which was experienced in the Wairarapa on Sunday, is being welcomed by farmers and residential gardeners alike (says an exchange). Pastures were dry as a result of two weeks’ hot summer weather. The rain on Sunday freshened growth considerably, and the fall yesterday promises to give farmers a plentiful supply of green feed, besides aiding root crops. Wool shorn in the Gisborne district so far this season is in particularly good order and is better than last year’s clip. However, shearing is not nearly as far forward as at this time last year. Although the quantity of rain on the flats has not been great, some heavy and fairly frequent falls have been experienced in parts of the back country and clips have been coming into Gisborne more slowly than 12 months ago. Shearing has been going on actively in most parts of the district for about a month now. The notorious lucerne ffea of Australia has made its appearance in Canterbury pastures, according to Mr L. Morrison, entomologist at the Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, in his half-yearly report to the meeting of the college board of governors. He said that the appearance was subject to verification of the insect by the Australian authorities. This insect had not previously been recorded from this country, although New Zealand, as far south as Canterbury, lay within the predicted area of its probable distribution. “What do you think of my summer haystacks?” asked an Ormond farmer of a Poverty. Bay Herald representative recently, pointing to a number of magni-ficently-grown willow trees adjacent to his milking shed. “I am just about ready for anything that comes this year in the way of dry weather,” he added. The farmer mentioned that three or four years ago, when rain failed during the summer and his dairy herd of over 50 cows were badly in need of green feed, he kept them .going for weeks on the supplementary feed furnished by the..willows. For a time he had stripped about half a tree a day of its foliage, and. his cows had come through the dry spell wonderfully well. A New York banking authority says that “harvests are smaller everywhere, especially in Central and South-Eastern Europe. Acreages planted in Australia and Argentine are less, and conditions none too favourable. The' Northern Hemisphere crops, excluding Russia and China, are about 350,000,000 bushels, or 11 per cent less than last year, and Southern Hemisphere prospects suggest a world total 400 to 450 million bushels smaller than two years ago. This will permit the first /.reduction, outside the United States, in the surplus accumulated since 1927. Moreover, the world crop of rye, a competing gram, is 250.U0U,. 000 bushels or 25 per cent smaller. These changes will put the wheat situation on a 'sounder basis, and relieve most markets, of the surpluses which have been plaguing them.”