INTENSIVE FARMING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3771, 19 June 1936, Page 7

INTENSIVE FARMING

£lOOO A YEAR FROM 2 ACRES As much as £5OO an acre was obtained last season from tomato crops in the central areas of the North Coast, says a correspondent of the Sydney Sunday Sun. This was not an isolated result. Several growers are known to have reached the £lOOO mark from twoacre plots. No other crop can compare with this as a money-maker. The danger is that such returns may start a “gold rush” to tomato fields. The Department of Agriculture senses it, and sounds a warning against over-planting in the approaching season. It is known that there has been an exceptionally heavy planting of seed, and the official view is that this is not justified merely on ‘the remarkable success of growers in one area, due to an exceptionally favourable growing season, combined with high prices owing to the comparative failure of the Queensland crop. Another point is that about 120 new glass-houses have recently been built for tomato growing, making a total of some 13,000 in the State. In these central coast districts, fringing the ocean, from the Nambucca to Coff’s Harbour, the tomato is cultivated on the stake system, and entirely in the open. The industry here is a one-man-one->aere proposition, the practice being for one man and a lad or two men to concentrate on a two-acre block. The crop is planted in virgin soil every year, and as a further precaution against disease and pests, systematic spraying is carried out right from the seed-bed stage. In feeding the plants, growers use as much as £lO worth of fertilisers an acre. This central coast belt of country is pronounced by Mr J. Douglass, special instructor of the Department of Agriculture, to be ideal for tomato culture as regards soil and climatic conditions. He has not seen its equal anywhere else in Australia, America or Europe. Mr Douglass, too, strongly advocates concentration on intensive cultivation of small plots instead of attempting to rush in large areas. He urges that they follow the example of these expert coastal men, who have reduced their system to a science, and are able to produce phenomenal yields, ranging to over 30 tons an acre, year after year.