AGRICULTURAL SEEDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22805, 12 August 1937, Page 13

AGRICULTURAL SEEDS

NO STATUTORY STANDARD OFFICIAL ANALYST'S COMMENT [by telegraph—own correspondent] DUXEDIN, Wednesday The absence of legislation in New Zealand for the control of the standard of seeds sold in the Dominion was commented upon by Mr. N. R. Fo.y, seed analyst of the Department of Agriculture, when giving a paper before the annual conference of the New Zealand Grassland Association, at Dunedin today, and discussing the seed trade. Mr. Foy said the marketing of agricultural seeds demanded considerable technical skill, but, unfortunately, it had to be admitted that in some countries seed was being handled by vendors who could not pretend to knowledge of seeds. There was, therefore, a need almost throughout the world for various enactments to control in some way the sale and distribution of agricultural seed. There had been specialisation in seed handling in New Zealand and Australia during recent years and this technical bias was in the best interests of the trade itself and the country's agricultural industry. In Australia there was fairly strict legislation to govern the entry of seed and its sale within the States of the Commonwealth. The position in New Zealand was unique in that although it was one of the foremost pastoral countries of the world, a seed-producing and exporting country, there was as yet nothing on the Statute Book which required that seed, when offered for sale, should conform to prescribed standards of quality, a state of affairs apparently considered to be so desirable and essential elsewhere.

Against this, however, was the fact that it was generally considered that the standard of the trade in New Zealand was on the whole a high one, and one ventured the opinion that viewed broadly it was of a higher standard than the trade of Australia.