FARMING NEWS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 64, 13 February 1936, Page 5

FARMING NEWS.

RURAL RAKINGS. The residents of Ratana pa, in a communal effort, still continue to grow large areas of wheat and other foodstuffs, including plenty of potatoes and maize. Just now the wheat is beginning to assume the golden tint, and, viewed from the elevation of the pa, the waving cars arc reminiscent of Canterbury farm scenes. Owing- to a wetter season, the wheat shows greater length of straw than last year, and generally speaking appears to bo well eared. The cereal crops are turning out much better than it was expected they would do (says an Otago paper). A good many crops have already been threshed, and they have yielded well —wheat up to 70 bushels per acre and oats up to 100 bushels. Of course, these arc extreme yields. The average will bo nearer to 40 to 45 bushels for wheat and 50 to 60 for oafs. All over the coastal area the crops arc good, and with a minimum c.f straw and well-filled heads they should pay quite well. In the back country the crops are light and yielding very poorly. For raspberry growers in and around Greytown, the season has been the most disastrous on record, and work for the year, in a majority of cases, lias been a complete loss. Pig farmers in the border districts of New South Wales have suffered heavy losses during the last few weeks as the result of an outbreak of swine pneumonia. A farmer at Corowa (N.S.W.) lost 130 pigs in a week, while at Urana (N.S.W.) a farmer lost 50 pigs in the same period.. Efforts are being made to stamp out the disease, which is now believed to be under control.