REMOVAL OF RAGWORT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4008, 4 February 1938, Page 2

REMOVAL OF RAGWORT

OBLIGATION ON FARMERS. Apparently the South Auckland districts are not the only places where ragwort is a recognised menace to practical and profitable farming. A letter from the Manawatu stock inspector of the Department of Agriculture, asking- for the co-operation of all farmers in the district in the eradication of ragwort, was received at a meeting of the Manawatu provincial executive of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union held at Palmerston North on Wednesday. The letter stated that for several seasons -ist the officers of the department had been most active in an attempt to exterminate the weed, and they had also attempted to draw the attention of farmers to the serious menace which ragwort presented to the Manawatu district. As a result of the co-operation already received from farmers, the work had improved the position considerably. The application of sodium chlorate to affected areas was found to be an effective method of dealing with ragwort, and a number of badly-infested areas in the Ihaka district, previously over-run with ragwort, had been returned to good pasture again. “The department has no desire to take proceedings against any farmer failing- to destroy ragwort, but wc wish the farmers, individually and collectively, to realise their responsibility and duty to their neighbours and the country in general to destroy every plant of ragwort before it seeds,” the letter stated. The inspector also pointed out that the Noxious Weeds Amendment Act imposed an obligation on the occupier of the land to keep his land clear, and he also drew attention to the fact that a farmer may be prosecuted for permitting ragwort to grow on his land even if he has not previously been warned.

The meeting was in sympathy with the letter, members giving instances in which farmers were allowing- individual ragwort plants to grow on their land in places where it could be removed with very little trouble.