MANURES FROM AIR

Taranaki Daily News, 22 July 1929, Page 18

MANURES FROM AIR

LATEST FARMING METHODS.

NEW ZEALAND’S GREAT FUTURE.

A story of how manures are now being obtained from the air was told by Dr. N. Annette, a British agricultural scientist who arrived from Sydney by the Marama at Auckland on Tuesday. Some three years ago Dr. Annette retired from the Indian Civil Service. He had been lecturing on agricultural science 'in some of the Indian colleges, and on arrival here he took an interest in grass-land farming. For a year he went on to a farm and milked cows “for fun” as he described it, and after he had gained a certain amount of knowledge, took up farming on his own account at Matangi, near Cambridge, in the Waikato. He had intended to devote the rest of his life to his own experimental farm in the endeavour to help others on the land, but the British Imperial Chemical Industries got into communication with him, and he went to Australia to discuss scientific farming methods with representatives then in Australia. Now, he is going to England and the Continent to do research work before coming back to New Zealand to give the Government and the primary producer in this country the benefit of his further experiences, which will entail the study of “getting manures from the air,” as he explained it.

BIG RESEARCH STATION.

“The British research station,” Dr. Annette said, “has been staffed, by some of the best available workers in agricultural science, and r when completed it will be the best equipped agricultural research station of its kind in England. They have, moreover, established advisory officers in many countries throughout the United Kingdom. The whole object of this work is not to boost the sale of nitrogenous manures, but to find out exactly on what crops and in what manner it will pay to use them. The biggest development in agriculture of recent years has been the recognition of the fact that nitrogenous manures, when used as a supplement to superphosphate and potash, enables dairy farmers to get a far larger 1 return from their grassland. These results have been proved quite definitely in Europe. One had to be cautious in concluding that the same results will be obtained in New Zealand. The Imperial Chemical Industries sent a commission to New Zealand and Australia consisting of men of wide experience, and they concluded that this Dominion would almost certainly prove to be a greater field for the use of nitrogenous manures than any other part of the world. They deputed Mr. Lindsay Robb, one of the world’s foremost authorities on grass-land farming, to visit New Zealand and arrange experimental work in collaboration with the Fields Division of the Department of Agriculture.

NEW ZEALAND IS THE PLACE.

“The first season’s work has been so promising,” declared Dr. Annette, “that Imperial Chemical Industries realise the

necessity for a whole-time experimentalist to be detailed in New Zealand, and that’s where I happen to come in. We have funds enough at our back to work in with the New Zealand Department of Agriculture and Scientific Industrial Research Department, as well as the Lincoln and Massey Agricultural Colleges. “Let me make this quite plain, however: We are not out to boost the sale of nitrogenous or any kind of manure, because the research staff of the Imperial Chemical Industries is quite apart from the sales organisation,” he said. . “In order to make me more fully acquainted with affairs; and this obtaining manures from the air, I am leaving very shortly for England and the Continent, in order to <ret in touch r ’ h recent developments of fertiliser and grass-land management of farms,” Dr. Annette mentioned, incidentally, that there wc ■* tremendous possibilities ahead of New Zealand as far as agricultural progress was concerned. His remarks did not only apply to dairying, but also to sheep-farming and wheat growing.