CURRENT CROPPING WORK

Northland Age, Volume IX, Issue 39, 20 February 1940, Page 2

CURRENT CROPPING WORK

Often in January it is possible for farmers to determine the likelihood of a shortage of feed supply in the late autumn, winter, and early spring, for which periods there is still time to make additional provision. In most districts the only root crop which may be satisfactorily sown in January is soft turnips. The most suitable varieties for this late sowing are Hardy Green Globe and Imperial Green Globe. In North Auckland soft turnips sown on moderately fertile land after good preparation have given good' crops sown as late as March. A 'temporary pasture containing a mixture of 25 to 301 b. of Italian or Western Wolths ryegrass and 4 to 61b. of red clover to the acre is a crop which may be sown in late or early autumn. It will give a plentiful supply of feed in the winter and early spring and should yield a heavy crop of hay or silage the following summer. To ensure that it supplies a sufficient bulk of feed in the winter, this mixture should be sown by the end of March or early April at the latest. When the land available for late summer or autumn sowing is required for another crop in the spring, then it may be well worth while to grow a cereal catch crop—oats or barley sown at the rate of 2 to 21 bushels to the acre. These crops give green feed which is more quickly available after sowing than any other crop. All these crops should receive a phosphatic dressing of from 2 to 4 cwt. of basic slag or lime super mixed in equal parts. On dairy farms it is advisable to utilise special summer feed such as early sown soft turnips, green maize, millet, and lucerne as soon as the production of the cows begins to drop. There may actually be a sufficient quantity of pasture to give cows a full feed but at this season of the year the quality of the pasture may be too low to maintain production at its proper level. WOOL COUNTRY Bessarabia, much in the news of discussions between Russia and Germany, is the 17,000 square-mile eastern division of Rumania. The chief export industry of the nearly 3,000,000 population is wool growing and marketing. THE SUPERSEDED COW? From the “Manchester Guardian”: “Margarine manufacturers claim with great certainty that it is now impossible for any save those with the most sensitive of palates to tell the difference between samples of butter and samples of margarine, though something must depend on the quality of the samples selected. If the two preparations are really indistinguishable, there would seem to be a bad day in store for the butter-mak-ns; why should anyone pay for the dearer

article if the cheaper one cannot he | recognised? At the end of the last I war it was a poor palate that could not distinguish between ‘marge’ and butter, but they say that vast improvements have since been made in the synthetic article. “Among them, it is claimed, is a standard vitamin content for margarine. The ‘sunshine vitamins’ A and D vary in butter according to the time of the year in which it is made. Mar-garine-makers now say that they can put a full ration of vitamins A and D at summer strength into their product all the year round, which ought to make the incompetent and climatic cow more of a back number than ever. Indeed, when the pensive cow sees a package of margarine it ought to blush deeply for its own shortcomings as butter queen. On the otherhand, it is hard to get cows to blush about anything, and most of them have never heard of vitamins.” Western Canadian farmers whose wheat averaged less than five bushels per acre received a bonus payment of five million dollars before Christmas. They will receive another three and a half million dollars hi March. * ☆ India possesses more cattle than any other country in the world; its cattle population is nearly a third of the world’s total. They are mostly of very poor quality, inefficient and diminiutive. ☆ ☆ ☆ All restrictions on the production of sugar in 1940 by farmers in the United States have been removed. ☆ ☆ r Drought has caused a shortage of rice in some parts of Japan and 80,000 bushels of Chinese rice have been sent to Osaka for relief purposes. * * ir All kinds of meat, as well as tallow and lard, will be allowed into France and Algeria, free of duty, until June 30th. next.