RAGWORT DESTRUCTION

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21332, 5 November 1932, Page 15

RAGWORT DESTRUCTION

Sir,—l was astounded to read in the Herald that arrangements have been made between the Labour Department. Public Works Department and Agricultural Department, to organise unemployed labour, with the hoped for co-operation of county councils, in eradicating ragwort by spraying, which is the slowest, most inconvenient and costly method of doing the work. More particularly am 1 surprised at this decision, because the Department of Agriculture is fully aware of all the above defects in spraying as compared with the sodium chlorate and lime mixture, which is cheaper, more effective and can he used at eight times the speed of spraying; neither does it require any expensive apparatus. Tho cheapest efficient knapsack sprayer costs £4 2s 6d. 1 notice from the report that farmers will be required to buy the sprayers and tho sodium chlorate, provide transport for workers and contribute to their cost. Let me just give comparative figures. A farmer would have to buy a sprayer for each man. Say, for example, he had engaged two men. That would entail an outlay of £8 5s for two sprayers, or one Davis bulk pump, which costs more. If these two men worked hard and had water handy, they would take a day to do one acre, using about 20-251b. of sodium chlorate. The water supply has to be sledged out and maintained. Wo need not take into consideration their transport or keep, because that would occur anyhow, but for the cost of two sprayers the fanner could buy 33 tons of crushed carbonate of lime, which with 281b. of sodium chlorate per aero instead of 20, would provide enough of the mixture to do 52 acres, which can easily be broadcasted at the rate of eight acres per day by (he same two men, occupying in" all days, as against 52. days occupied in spraying, besides getting the mammal value of the lime which most farms badly need, and which reacts to superphosphate that can be applied within a week of the sodium lime mixture. Furthermore, if it, takes two men one day to spray ono acre, a farmer with 200 acres of ragwort would be smothered by next year's crop before he had half got through that of this season. Government tests (see Journal of Agriculture, August, 1931) show that on a measured acre it took two men with a Davis bulk pump seven hours to spray, and that with sodium chlorate at 4d per lb. it cost £l. Under the sodium-lime treatment it costs 15s 6d per acre with sodium chlorate at 4j,d per lb., but wo do eight acres in a day, compai'ctl with one acre. W. C. Cavley Alexander.