MASS SOWING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27040, 26 March 1949, Page 2

MASS SOWING

CENTRAL QUEENSLAND PROJECT BRITISH FOOD PROGRAMME Round-the-clock sowing operations began on the British food farm project in Central Queensland, one of the world’s greatest agricultural projects, in January of this year. This sowing marks the climax of the biggest attempt yet made to ease Britain’s desperate meat shortage. On its success depends production of sufficient grain sorghum to provide Britain with up to an additional 10,000,0001 b of pork annually. After a six weeks’ wait for sufficient rain to ensure successful germination of the sorghum seed, a mechanised agricultural battery of 27 units, tractors hauling 24-row combines, operated by G2 men began the sowing of 30,500 acres. Tractors, trucks and men operated in two 10-hour shifts daily, averaging 2000 acres on the day shift, and about 1000 acres on each night shift, for which the tractors were equipped with powerful fore and rear searchlights. The sowing schedule was a two-way race against time, for seed had to be planted with the greatest possible speed to ensure the utmost germination and development of young plants from the moisture then in the ground, and it had to be completed -before further rain made the ground too wet to carry the heavy field machinery. This sowing of 30,500 acres is only the beginning of the corporation’s development programme foivfood bowl farms in Mid-Western Queensland, where it is proposed to cultivate annually 260,000 acres of the rolling black soil downs.