THE PIONEER’S POLICY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3215, 27 October 1915, Page 10

THE PIONEER’S POLICY.

The policy, of the pioneer in regard to the treatment meted out to the lands in the Southern Pacific was probably very similar to that of other lands in their early stages of development. Nevertheless, W. Catton Grasby comments on what he terms the Australian 'pioneer's policy makes very interesting reading at the present time. Whether the early settler had previous farming experience or not, the objects and the methods adopted were practically the same. His object was to produce marketable crops w r hich he could ship to the Old World in exhange for money, or its equivalent in goods. As the miners exploited the deposits of minerals and shipped away gold, silver, copper, lead, etc., so the pastoralist and farmer proceeded to take from the soil the accumulations of phosphoric acid, potash, nitrogen, and other plant food in the form of wool, wine, fruit, and so forth. The fertility represented by the products consumed by the population was, and is still, being equally surely withdrawn from the land, and the waste is got rid of through sewers of the city, or in townships, and on farms, in the readiest way available, with no thought from an agricultural point of view that it represents so much soilwealth. Grazing is usually the first use to which the lands of a new country are put, and the common belief is that this enriches rather than impoverishes the soil. Under certain conditions that view, no doubt, is correct; but the pioneer pastoralist stocked up his virgin country and annually harvested his crop of fat bullocks, sheep, or wool, as the case might be. Every bullock and every bale of wool represented so much plant food taken from the soil, none of which went back in any form. Johnston (agricultural chemist) states that 10001 b of raw merino wool yields 701 b to 90lb of potassium carbonate and 51b to 61b of potassium chloride and sulphate. “On this basis we may safely estimate,” says W. Catton Gi’asby, ‘‘that 10001 b of Australian wool contains half a cwt of potash. . As Australia sends away over 500,000,0001 b of wool annually, this represents 28,000,0001 b of potash, or an equivalent of, say 25.000 tons of commercial sulphate of potash worth, say, £300.000, taken from the soil each year.” The difference between a crop of bullocks, wool, or butter and a crop of wheat or potatoes is only one of degree. Heavy stocking without tillage, surface-sowing, and fertilisation, however, does more than merely withdraw the plant food represented by the meat, wool, etc., sold. Naturally, the stock eat out the most nutritious and palatable plants, so that necessarily the feeding value and carrying capacity of the pasture quickly deteriorates. Senseless firing at any and all times of the year, together with rabbits and heavy sheep-stocking, have changed large areas of good sheep country into howling wildernesses. Eeft alone, this same country, if cleared of rabbits and netted, would in due course, such is Nature’s way. grow another crop of vegetation, possibly the same, although frequently she practises a rotation in such cases, and the native grasses of the more robust type would be intermingled in all probability with many varieties of weed-plants. The pioneers, however, were comparatively few in number, and had good and bad times, and did an immense amount of work in opening Un the country. It remains for the new settler to attempt the revegetating of the land which at present is worthless from a stock-carrying viewpoint. There is hone that with smaller areas and the freehold tenure that the killing out of the rabbits, together with netting, surface-sowing with suitable grasses, etc., that much of the country will be reclaimed These areas would require long spells and light stocking to enable them to bo brought back to what they were when the pioneer pushed his way through the native growth knee-high.