THE IMPORTANCE OF GRASS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3828, 2 November 1936, Page 8

THE IMPORTANCE OF GRASS

“Grassland (research, I am convinced, can never be pursued to proper advantage unless and until field trials on a very large scale are conducted with the grazing animal. We need to contemplate a scale of expenditure and a standard of equipment comparable to that which in the past has been devoted to the building of laboratories and to the organisation of laboratory research. We are concerned primarily with food \for human beings, and with human health, therefore it is essential to work with cattle and shnep. We know extraordinarily little about the real feeding value of even the chief herbage plants; we knov' still less as to their effort on the ultimate quality of milk and meat, and we know nothing whatever as to the fluctuating value of individutl species in relation to soil and climate. We do not know whether a mixed ration of a fair number of different grasses and elovers mingled together in a sward constitutes a better diet for our cattle and sheep than a diet consisting of but one or two species. —Professor R. G. Stapledon, C.8.E., director of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station and author of “The Land, Now and To-morrow.”