MODERN METHODS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 28 November 1938, Page 11

MODERN METHODS

CLEARING FARM LAND BY MACHINERY DEMONSTRATION TO BE MADE IN BULLER DISTRICT » Unilfl.l Frens A asocial lon I WESTPORT. 27th November. Vast machinery will be brought lo the Buller district in February to demonstrate the clearing and draining of at present unproductive land, said l the Minister of Mines. Mr Webb, who! is also Member of Parliament for the Buller electorate, when he addressed a record gathering of farmers at a meeting of the Buller Farmers’ Union on Saturday night. Mr Webb was welcomed by Mr Hateley, president of the In opening his address Mr Webb stressed importance of the application of machinery in the clearning and draining of land. Something had to be done at once to increase production throughout New Zealand and before production could be increased extra areas of ground had to be cleared and brought to a suitable point of produc- i tivity. There were thousands of acres • of good land that required only work—land that was near to railways and highways—and yet the old methods of | clearing the land were too slow. The 30 years that he had spent on the. West Coast convinced him that it took j at least three generations to break the! land in. The average farmer, with the old methods, found it a difficult task to keep the growth of blackberries and j undergrowth in control and while doing 1 that had no extra time for more productive work. The modern children who saw older people still battling fori an existence from the land, lost heart and they in their turn left the land and: sought employment elsewhere. CLEARING FOUR ACRES A DAY j This state of affairs was entirely i wrong and if machinery could alter the case the time when machinery should be used had arrived. By this modern method it would be possible to clean, stump and plough four acres of ground a day. Mr Webb said he had seen the work that could be done with machinery during a recent tour he had made of the Gisborne district. Every particle of modern science was expressed in that drilling work and there was no hard manual labour attached to the job. It was all done by the giant plant. He had seen elsewhere a bulldozer clearing land of stumps and pushing 20-year-old trees out of the way as if they were but; straws. New Zealand was one of the finest j countries in the world and, with the! Government’s present scheme for de- \ veloping West Coast lands, lands which I formerly lay waterlogged and covered with debris would be brought to production. MACHINERY OBTAINABLE I During his tour he had interviewed a representative of the builders of these mammoth machines, who was, ! himself a professor in a Californian’ university, and the Australasian repre-; sentative of the firm. The Government could obtain the plant but first an inspection had to be made of the district to see if the land could be cleared economically. Later, Mr Webb saiu he conferred with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Works, Mr Semple, and discussed the plans. In February a demonstration will take place in the Buller district on three different types of soil. It was hoped, said Mr Webb, that the Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers, members of Parliament and representatives of all bodies throughout New Zealand would be present in the Buller district at the demonstration. The Government had distinct hopes that it could get machinery that would clear up the Buller district and other parts of New Zealand in a minimum of time, a job which under old methods might have taken 100 years.