DRY FARMING

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17154, 2 October 1926, Page 15

DRY FARMING

ENTIRELY NEW PRINCIPLE ITS POSSIBILITIES APPARENT " Dry ’’ farming, involving, entirely new pijiiciples and making for production oil lands that were entirely hoiTcii and waste, has been carried out with such success in America and other parts of the world that it i.s now attracting the attention of farming communities in all countries. The system lias never been tried out in New Zealand as yet, hut from tlm description of tlio methods employed it- would appear that it would lie eminently suited to tho , l( .,;d:, of a district such as Poverty l.'.riv, where in dry ,summers' liMlc. rain is experienced, there is mi doubt, that farmers here are fated witli many dillL cullies during dry seasons, and 1 although the. principles explained in dry farming are to some extent revolutionary departures from accepted theories, there is, no reason why a, trial should not bo made. When one considers tlie tremendous advances that have been made in industry and science during the past century, it must he admitted that farming has been in a. backwater, for the methods adopted, to-day differ very little, in the main, from those which were in vogue 100 years ago. Il is only by constant experimentation and' endeavor that farmers ran. hope to ultimately secure Hie maximum productivity of their land, but the principles outlined in .dry farming arc such as to seem applicable to Poverty Bay, and, therefore, worthy at least, of some consideration. the: old and the new. The dry farming method which has been successfully practised in certain parts of America and in many of tho European v countries is particularly applicable to land where irrigation is impossible. In a, recent issue of the London Times in which special attention was devoted! to 'Spain, an article outlining the principles was given by Maigelino de Arana, director of ( tlie school of agriculture at Zamora. This shows that tho method! when adopted in Spain had greatly increased the yields from the whoatgrowing areas. In Spain, as in other dry. countries which form three-quarters of the worhj, the cultivation of cereals and vegetables is based upon the. system of leaving tho land fallow one year in every two, three or four, according to rainfall. The result is that at least one-third of all cultivatable land lies fallow every year. The chief advantage of allowing land to lie fallow for one year is that part of the rainfall is retained in tlie soil from that year to the next. Senor <le Arana, in his article, says;—“The present system of sowing cereals in snob land is not rational. The surface of the ground is usually entirely covered by the plants, though these are sometimes sown in lines, never more than Biti. or so apart. In these circumstances tho crop can only he harrowed superficially. Even with tho long-pronged machine called Weheder, work must cease after the wheat is Bin to 12m long. This superficial work is insufficient to prevent evaporation of water from the surface soil. Its efficiency is completely destroyed by tlie least shower of rain after tho harrowing, as a fresh surface crust, is at once formed. My experience is that, as a result of this system, at least as much water as is saved during a fallow year is lost the next year by direct evaporation. This loss can he avoided. A DIFFERENT METHOD. “ Early in my career I noticed that in Toro, (province of Zamora, where the annual rainfall is 300 millimetres) beans were sown in land which the previous year had been under wheat, following' fallow. The bean crops were unusually better than those of wheat, although beans need more water. The explanation of this apparently anomaly lies in the different methods of sowing and cultivating the two crops.” Tho method of wheat-growing introduced by Senor de Arana was to sow the wheat in narrow lines from 2in to Sin in width, separated by strips of uiV sowa soil from 2 feet to 3 feet, which allows of cultivation at all times, and docs away with the system of fallow, at the same time greatly increasing tlie averago yield) per acre. In tor-cultivation with lucerne planted in rows 21 in to 24in apart has been proved in New Zealand to produce immensely increased crops per acre, and though this cultivation is primarily undertaken to keep down weed growth without injuring the lucerne plants, it has the secondary, but no less vital effect of conserving the soil moisture which means so much to the plant. The application of the principle of inter-tillage lo many crops besides lucerne is what we consider will he tlie next progressive agricultural step in New Zealand. VVlml- farmer would think of' broadcasting bis potatoes, his mangolds, or his maize, when desirous of a bumper crop of tubers, roola or cobs? Then why not apply the same system of planting in wide-apart rows, allowing of thorough inter-cultivation of many other crops?