THE RURAL WORLD

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8457, 17 June 1913, Page 2

THE RURAL WORLD

THE DRY SUMMER INFLUENCE ON DAIRYING. The dry summer which has bees experienced over tho northern part of the North Island has caused a very serious loss to tho farming community. The returns from dairy herds have boon reduced, young - stock have deteriorated, flocks of sheep have had their quality impaired, aud the fan raers themselves have suffered from anxiety and extra labour, as well as from monetary loss. The ill effects of tho dry weather will not bo averted even when copious rains have fallen, for the same causes which led to the injury of stock during the summer will accentuate the evils when winter arrives. There is no doubt that in many cases the losses duo to shortage of feed were caused almost entirely by the absolute dependence which farmer's place on grass. Providence has been so good to tho northern, farmer in the way of climate that averagely he can depend upon pasture and pasture alone to keep his stock all through the year, it is this large and complete dependence upon grass which causes lost and suffering when there occasionally descends upon the land what we ar* pleased to call a summer drought, oj when an occasional spell of wet, cold weather causes scarcity in the winter time. If northern farmers, and Aucklanders in particular, would only raise a moderate percentage of such fodder crops as lucerne, red clover, and green maize as a protection against summer famines, and supplemented the same with mangolds, carrots, silver boot, etc., as crops for winter, feed, there need not only bo no loss of .stock or diminution of milk supplies but rather an immense gain. A| the present time the, northern farmer grows only one acre of root and fodder crops for every (our hundred acres that he has in grass, which moans of course that tho bulk of farmers do not grow any crops at all This is a matter that reflects no credit on his skill as an agriculturist. -He may argue, and does argue, that the cost of labour makes it impossible for him to go in for cultivation, but then the farmers of tho South Island, where labour is just as dear and feed crops are more difficult to grow, raise more than twenty times as much fodder and roots ns the northerners, so this argument falls to the ground. The fact of the matter is that Nature is so kind to the northerner that neither winter famine nor summer drought is ever sufficiently severe to kill out his flocks or his herds, as it would in many other countries; and another fact to be considered is that land has hitherto bpen so cheap that he could afford to uie it

purely as a grazing run. Under’ - the present system of gras* farming there is more loss of stock and stock products every year than would pay for all the cost of labour required to raise crops. Under this extra* vagantly simple fystem the capacity of land to carry stock or to produce milk or meat is kept down to. the Tbs 319-A -/ith 3£|o ncres of good land , under grass alone cannot carry so much stock or produce so much milk, or turn q& so many head of fat lambs, as the man with 150 acres who supplements grass with a fair proportion of crops. After all, rt.is.not such a very costly thing to put down three or four acres on most small farms in lucerne. This crop at any rate only requires cultivation every eight or ten.years. Bed clover is not an expensive crop, and if sown on wellprepared land will stand nearly any drought likely to be experienced in this country. The same thing can bo said of maize and several other fodder crops, and compared with the value received applies equally well to roots. “New Zealand Herald-**.