Soil Analysis

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 810, 2 November 1929, Page 31

Soil Analysis

An Important Side of Farming

RECENT years have seen a big increase in the amount of attention paid to soil analysis. Much more attention must be given to this increasingly important side of farming in the near future if the grazier and agriculturist is to get the best out of his soil.

A Sun m an visited the fertilisers to of Messrs. Kempthorne Prosw , Drug Company during the se ‘ k ‘ an <t noted there samples of soil * eived from farmers in all parts of Z country. The samples, for the st part, had been sent in by farmwho were dissatisfied with results Ti top-dressing operations and who wanted to know the exact deficiencies ot their soil. -Many farmers are working m the ,rk in regard to top-dressing,” stated' manager. Mr. G. Arkinstall. “They ply a manure merely because it is manure, and then feel dissatisfied be*gme results do not come up to extant life requires a balanced diet ua[ as much as any other life, and if ; te ao ,i is deficient in any essential ingredient it will not give the best remits until that deficiency is made up. A farmer might go on top-dressing with one fertiliser for years and not „ iv . the soil exactly what, it required to make It a correctly balanced diet for pl The case of a local farmer was mentioned as one to the point. The grazier Question had gone to considerable expense over a long period of years in carrying oht an extensive top-dress-ing programme, but results had been fir from satisfactory, and his pastures were full of weeds. This, despite the fart that he used a special mixture which cost over £2 a ton more than the average top-dressing mixture An analysis of the soil proved it to be deficient in an ingredient not supplied by his special mixture, and he could have cont inued his programme of top-dressing for years and not attained success. Started on a new programme he is now top-dressing with a manure mixed to suit his soil

quirements, and already the weeds and other plants of low fertility are giving way to a healthy sole of grass. Hundreds of farmers are workiug much on the same lines as the one in the case just mentioned until he had his soil analysed. They buy a fertiliser mixture in response to some advertisement, or on the recommendation of a friend, and then condemn the whole practice because the result is not up to expectation. More and more in all parts of the Dominion farmers are being called upon to top-dress; more and more various soil foods are calling for replacement. The farmer must allow Bcience to step in and show him the way. There is much to support the contention that, as a progressive farmer now knows exactly what each cow in his herd produces, so he should know the deficiencies of his soil as a result of scientific analysis, and proceed to deal with those deficiencies much in the same way as lie would any deficiencies in his herd. Today, isolated farmers are sending ■samples of soil forward for analysis from as far apart as the North of Auckland and the Chatham Islands. Within the next decade there is every indication that soil analysis will he an essential part of every farmer’s annual programme.

Experiments and tests conducted by Mr. W. Dillon Weston, of the University School of Agriculture, Cambridge, England, indicate that it is possible for the germ of foot-and-mouth disease and other epidemics to travel long distances by upper air currents. Mr. Weston took many airplane flights and found spores and bacteria at great heights. He states that numbers of bacteria were active even at an altitude of two miles above the earth.

The Pennsylvania experiment station has found the" following fixture a fair substitute for skim-milk for calves.—Wheat flour, SOIb; coconut meal, 251 b; nutrium or a soluble skimmilk powder, 201 b; oil meal, 101 b, and dried blood 21b. This material was mixed in warm water, at the rate of about lib of meal to six of water. It was discovered that for the first few weeks 21b of the mixture a day was sufficient for each calf.