FRUIT-GROWING AND DAIRYING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3274, 13 December 1916, Page 6

FRUIT-GROWING AND DAIRYING.

THEORY AND PRACTICE

A statement by Mr T. B, Phillip?, the irrigation orchardist of the Cromwell Development, Company, that ho knew of no placo in New Zealand where fruit-growing and dairying could be so successfuly combined as" in the Cromwell district, where

five to 10 acres in lucerne would, he said, make a good living for the settler until his fruit trees came into bearing, has been challenged by the New Zealand Farmer. '' Granting that lucerne could be successfully grown in Central Otago, a man, to establish dairying in conjunction with the development "of an orchard, would," the New Zealand Farmer says, "require to have some more than a few acres of lucerne. In such a climate ho would require to havo proper buildings to make provision for other fodder on which to feed his cows during the winter months, when the lucerne was at a dormant stage, though, of course, he could make lucerne hay in the summer for winter use; but this is assuming a system which obviously has many drawbacks, and has never been tested under practical conditions. Altogether, the idea of combining dairying and fruit-growing is one of the most impractical suggestions vre remember having been brought forward." Mr Phillips, writing' to Messrs A. Moritzson and Co., in reply to this criticism, quotes as follows from the August issue o£ Better Fruit' (a leading fruit journal of America) : —" Fruit districts where diversity farming has been more or less a factor in connection with orcharding are a standing testimonial to the value of diversity in connection .with the orchard business. It is a fact that where any district is engaged in, or has gone into, diversity in connection with orchard business, the district and business condition of that district in a financial way is much better than in the fruit districts which have depended entirely i n fruit. There is nothing like a reasonable amojiit of diversity to help the fruitgrower out in the years when fruit prices are low and crops are light." In California, where lucerne grows well, as in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, dairying has, Mr Phillips writes, been successfully combined with fruit-growing. This is_ not the idea of a theorist, but an accomplished fact, and much to the, advantage of the fruitgrower. The main feed for the hundreds of thousands of dairy cows in the Imperial, Sacramento. San Joaquin, and other valleys of California, supplying as they do hundreds of butter factories, is nothing else but lucerne, which for a considerable part of the year ia fed in the form of hay. Fortunate is the fruitgrower who has his cows, pigs, and poultry to help him through the lean years, and the 1 - arc no fruit-growing districts but that will have some bad years. Within a few miles of'the town of Cromwell are hundreds of acrcp of lucerne, some of which have been in for 25 years. Mr I'hiilips declares that he has never seen better fields of lucerne anywhere in California than he has seen on Messrs Manson and Holloway's farm, within three miles of Cromwell. Ten acres in lucerne, with abundance of irrigation water in this district, will provide feed the year round—say, with the addition of some" bran and oilcakes (but rhis is not necessary)—for 10 dairy cows, besides feed for a few pigs and green feed for a good number of fowls. This ie not theory, but what has been proved out in thousands of cases in California under very similar conditions as prevail in the dry parts of Central Otago.