FARMING NEWS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 190, 13 July 1936, Page 5

FARMING NEWS.

RURAL R. 4 KINGS

The Raglan County Council this week toolU the preliminary steps to raise a loan of £IO,OOO for the eradication of ragwort in the county. At a winter crutching and oddment sale at Gisborne the total offering submitted was 721 bales and 47 Kicks ot wool, 4940 sheepskins, and 132 hides. Competition was keen throughout, and an almost total clearance of catalogues was effected. Some attractive parcels of crutchings were catalogued, and for bright station tirsts, well sorted, 9d was paid for quite a number of lines. Two very light-condi-tioned iots made 9Jd. With the fodder reserves wiped out by great sand-drifts and by rabbits, there is no reasonable hope that the desert fringe country of Australia can ever return to the stilte in which the white man found it. Conditions of life in these regions, especially for women and children, are so had that a thoughtful community should discourage their settlement unless they otter obvious and substantial compensations. The urgent problem is to prevent the better rainfall areas from suffering a like fate. These are the conclusions of Air F. N. Rateliffe, in a report to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research on soil drift and erosion in the arid interior, and more particularly in the northern portions of South Australia.

Several sales of dairy farms have taken place recently ill the Te Afolia district.