PUMICE LAND PROVED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22900, 1 December 1937, Page 16

PUMICE LAND PROVED

easily developed pumice land of small prairie valilo could do what it is doing now, my life would have been a very different one. "'Hero to-day there aro men running a cow to an acre and a-half or an aero and three-quarters, s, plus young replacement stock. Tho land must have 3cwt. of superphosphate a year, but there is ,110 draining, no stumping. Tho land never pugs and does not parch. It can bo ploughed in the rain, it grows lucerne and wonderful turnips and has compensations for. a longtsh winter pause in growth. Admit tod Iv the Stato-developod farms mav have had a more generous start than tho average settlers farm could get under the old svstom, but thero really is .no comparison between my two farming development iobs and one hero. . lnis is easily tho best pioneering proposition .in" the. Dominion—and. it ponies last What' I want to emphasise is this- There'was tho day when the bush farm oir strong country was the great idea. Later there was a wave ot enthusiasm for, swamp land. Now opportunity, equally as good, if not better, considering the many advantages oL pumice land and managed bv modern methods, is opening up where formerly it was never expected." i Development Costs • Such enthusiasm is justified although it is always well, when. coinpurisons arc niacle, to remember that the established districts do net go out of business or lose their fertility because .they have/been run through the brdeals of boom aitcl slump. The land itself' is the: subject of this : discussion; and it can definitely be stated that development costs on the pumice lands are not excessive in relation to _ the butter-fat production. Two private men of wide experience agree that the cost of establishing permanent pasture, covering desiring, ploughing, sowing with perennial rye, certified white clover and cocksfoot, with 3cwt. ot' superphosphate, runs from £6 to £7 an acre. Fencing and buildings and the reticulation of water, if necessarv, must still bo ' provided. Such pasture is being well maintained with an annual top-dressing of 3cwt. In both tho European and Native schemes tho system lias enabled tho officials in charge to use large numbers of cattle and sheep to help to consolidate tho country before subdivision or. at least, allotment. This is a factor of .importance which usually , would, bo beyond the reach of a small -farmer setting out to do all the work himself. Systems of Settlement Three systems have been used. One is by the State' to produce ready-made farms upon which the settler starts with full production, but also with all the- costs, on his back. In another, as on the Guthrie block, the settlers, on the homesteading method, were given their land free provided they performed so much development work each year. This lias been a highly successful scheme for both the State and the settler, but obviously it demands the application of the pioneering instinct that is not encouraged by present Government policy. Oil other blocks, part of the land has been developed, leaving some virgin land into which the settler : can put his own labour for his ultimate advantage. However opinion may vary over the merits or demerits of these systems, the point for immediate emphasis is that a great zone of workable virgin land exists in the pumice districts under review. Several private development enterprises, one on a large scale, are in hand in addition to those of the State. _ , .' Only part of the land, being brought in by the State is in occupation for dairying, but the butter output of tho Ngoiigotaha dairy factory from cream drawn from the Rotorua district-alone, has reached 1150 tons. The figures for. the last four seasons are: —1933-34,1 859 tons; 1934-35, 935 tons; 1935-36, 1000' tons; 1936-37, 1150 -tons. This factory started in 1910 with an output of 35 tons. The new settlements of Ngakuru, Guthrie and Horohoro (native), all in scrub a few years ago, earned id the 1936-37 season butter-fat cheques aggregating £35,000. ; (To be. continued.)

SECOND WAIKATO

SEMARKABI/B BESULTS " A- DESPISED HERITAGE LONG-DELAYED INHERITANCE DAIRY PASTURE IN TWO YEARS V • . "No. I. A -second- Waikato is ! coming into being oil the pumfco lands, beyond the Mariiakn Divide. Visual and statistical evidence is now of a kind that attracts interested men from ' every quarter. Many of the business people of Rotorua, itself would be astonished if they were fully-informed .of the numbers of farmers/ to say nothing of would-be speculators, who have been spying out tho land-in the present year. Hie- aires' in question stretches from the Waikato River to Rotoiti, from Rotoiti to Tokaanu and maybe beyond, from southern Tokoroa to _ southern Galatea: It is not an open clear sweep, as is tho Waikato from Taupiri to'Matamata. Hills and little 'ranges, lakes and such a feature as the uplifted plain of Kaingaroa, now fully wooded, destroy the visual survey of many whose business ought to, compel, them, to understand what is ; really- being.done in the matter of land, settlement;, increased production and increased consumption. Wide Scope But the land is there—virtually all the workable land will be farmed some day. There are practical people, not necessarily authorities, who picture a day when tb.<? verdant pasture will rise well up,the slopes of tho watershed between the Taupo country and the King Country. .Conservative opinion places a severe restriction upon dairying possibilities above an altitude of 1500 ft. — but tho future will decide. Areas immediately available are of sufficient scope to arouse an eager interest in what can still bo described . as the. mid-land pumice wilderness. Much of it is Crown land and much is in natiye ownership. From what is being acocmplished, officially, in the * development of both is; a fairly sure indication: that State activities will be expanded even if the recent Estimates make laid development a Cinderella,to railways- and other Public "Works 011thusiasriis. No Government can i;ow stop pumice land development, whatever the idea of the moment may be. A'Neglected Heritage Actually there is no comparison between the potentialities of the virgin pumice land that can be ploughed and the areas of' Central Otago and Canterbury, which, have been, or are to be, irrigated, for the annual overhead of irrigation on land which to a great extent has been producing for many a year ; will cut far deeper into the production returns than will the initial and maintenance costs of the pumice land pastures, which in a places are giving a butter-fat return equal to the 'standard—comparable herds being taken —of the Waikato and of certain of the drained swamp ; areas. - 'long were the pumice lands despised' and loudly disparaged that it be difficult for many farmers who have not seen the remarkable achievejanents of,-.the last four or five years i£to imagine ' that the long, forbidding Smiles of stunted tea-tree, bracken fern, •fjnanoao,- tussock and' tutu can' with methods and knowledge be iquicklv turned into lush, nourishing that 'under proper management, the Rotorua-Taupo pumice lands ♦ -..offer the , greatest field for new * development in the Dominion. Prophets Proved Right There were confident, pioneers with properties largely used a3 runs, who, in the face of State indifference* long proclaimed the -knowledge they ••: won. Other voices' joined theirs at a time, bo it remembered, ' when the majoritv of - the • soldier settlers were 1 being settled oil r developed land at prices that proved impossible. But these voices were almost' literally crying in the wilderness. - Up to a point the State may have been justified in part r. of its hesitation, seeing that the psychology ot the 'returned soldier? would not countenance delay. Perhaps the opening of areas of the ! desolate pumice elands might have defeated settlement plans that left all initiative to tho individual. ,Certainly there must be consistent effort and efficient. work on the development of these lands. Half measures, will mean failure. Be that question as it may, there was the farther handicap of the fear of "bush sickness." This "disease, which later was proved to be a condition due to lack of iron that could be supplied to animals by medium ox licks, had checked' the normal expansion of Waikato. settlement when itreached tho edges' o ! r the volcanic plateau. Notwithstanding the gradual success o& gra£s farming in the Putaxuru and Tokoroa districts, the blight of the sickness on the Mamaku hills caused the land-hungry settler to move in other directions. Yet already m the vicinity of Rotorua settlers Ttere succeeding and offering reasonable proof that the valleys running southward would respond to treatment. Examples Overlooked It is a rather strange fact_ that settlement should have hung :lire so long in this area, particularly when there was. further proof of the potentialities of the soil on the holdings of Mr. E. Earle Vaiie and' Mr. W. G. Butcher,, in the Waitapu River valley, and on the southern end of Galatea. Station, -which, the former man- ' • ager, Mr. W. Scott, reminds us, prospered for years on its own increase, never buying a hoof other than rams and bulls. -• < Again, Mr. W. J. Parsons, on a small farm in the Ngakuru area, was proSi viding an object lesson, while many ' : others •at INgongotaha and alongside the borough boundaries of Rotorua itself, ivere succeeding through no mysterious means. ■ - i " One talked to a man who had broken in two farms, one before, the war and one after it. Haying: been • trained to the life by following all kinds/of rural employment, he set Out comparatively ' early in life to 'get his holding. "In those days," he ..said, "the idea, of most young fellows was to ' secure a bit of what we called strong bu'sli country, f . ciot it.: T toiled and made a living and when T went to tho war sold' out in the hurry that gave tho buyer the best of the equity my . hard toil had created. The farm was 'all right, but think of the cost of the small ploughablo area! I had had to stump it all. A Bush Parmer's Regrets "After the war, I went in again for bush and-a bit of timber-filled, black-berry-covered swamp. Wo had still a vast faith in the bush and tho swamp. That farm represented much toil and is a reasonable r ,proposition. But if I; had, knavfn when I, was a keen youth with. a team -and implemenis of my own and a little capital 'that" 'this