60 MEN MADE AVAILABLE

Taranaki Daily News, 8 February 1935, Page 7

60 MEN MADE AVAILABLE

STEP TO CHECK RAGWORT WORK FOR STRATFORD DISTRICT. MR. T. R. ANDERSON’S SUCCESS. RESULT OF VISIT TO WELLINGTON. As a reSult of his visit to Wellington, where he waited upon the Unemployment Board and upon the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. T. R. Anderson, chairman of the Stratford County Council and chairman of the Stratford Unemployment Committee, was able to inform a Daily News representative yesterday that 60 men drawn from the ranks of registered unemployed would be available for one month in a concentrated effort to deal with the ragwort menace in the Stratford district. These men will not use the sodium chlorate spray, but will operate quickly, pulling and stacking ragwort to be destroyed either by its own heat generated by the weight of the stacks, or by burning. „ When interviewed on his return Mr. Anderson expressed the opinion that much good might result from his visit to Wellington. In company with Mr. H. E. Blyde, president of the North Taranaki provincial executive of., the Farmers Union, and assisted by Messrs. W. J. Polson and H. G. Dickie, M.P.’s, he first interviewed Mr. W. Bromley, deputychairman of the Unemployment Board, and the ragwort position in Taranaki was thoroughly discussed. Mr. Anderson was concerned primarily with the problem of checking the spread of the weed in the Stratford district, while Mr. Blyde was eager for remedial steps to be taken over the wider area under the jurisdiction of his organisation. As a result of the deliberations, Mr. Bromley agreed to make 60 men available in the Stratford district for a month, while Mr. Anderson undertook to convene a meeting of the finance committee of the Stratford County Council with a view to arranging transport. This matter of transport will apply more particularly to a certain proportion of the 60, who will be concentrated on clearing badly infested lands towards Egmont National Park. Some farms in this vicinity are so full of ragwort that they threaten the surrounding country. They are farms that have reverted, to mortgagees who find themselves unable to afford the expense of engaging men to cut the weed. * The deputation interviewed the Hon. C. E. Macmillan, Minister of Agriculture, who had with him Dr. C. J. Reakes, Director-General of Agriculture. There Mi-. Anderson learned that the £lO,OOO voted by. the Government was intended partly to meet the cost of the subsidy on sodium chlorate, partly to clean up certain native lands and partly for the use of the Agricultural Department. It appeared, therefore, that little or none of this money would be available to deal directly with ragwort on abandoned Crown lands and lands subject to State Advance mortgages that had reverted to the Crown. The Minister and his advisers appeared to recognise fully the seriousness of the position , and Mr. Anderson was informed that a conference was to be held among the heads of the. various departments interested in the ragwort question. A promise was given to keep him informed about the result of the decisions arrived at.

’Speaking of the ragwort position generally, Mr. Anderson said that in his opinion the time was far from being too late to check ragwort seeding in the Stratford' district, where because of its altitude, compared with coastal districts, the weed was just now coming into fiqwer. If it were pulled and destroyed at. this, stage, he considered very effective steps would have been taken to combat the menace for the season. ■'Owing to the indisposition of Mr. Blyde, both he and Mr. Anderson returned home earlier than would otherwise have been the case.