NEW ZEALAND PASTURES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18629, 26 July 1930, Page 13

NEW ZEALAND PASTURES

HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT. DR. A. H. COCKANYE’S VIEWS. The following is from a paper presented by Dr A. H. Cockayne, Assistant Director-General, Department of j Agriculture, to the Empire Farmers’ Conference, held in Wellington:— During the tour of the Empire Farmers’ Delegation in both islands of New Zealand the development of our farming systems must of necessity have been largely viewed with reference to British conditions and British traditions based on conturies of experience. In this paper I wish to bring forward some of the main New Zealand viewpoints built on an extremely short agricultural history, but one which has undergone far more rapid evolutionary changes than would ordinarily be considered possible by any one from a country where agriculture has become stabilised. Less than a century ago New Zealand consisted mainly of four great types of country:— (1) Forest of varied and often very dense nature, belonging to types essentially different from those originally clothing great parts of Britain. (2) Scrub and heath lands, partly of a stable nature, but mainly representing one of the successional stages back to forest. (3) Large areas of swamp land, the cover varying from fen vengetation to forest. (4) Open grassland, known as tussock grasslands, which had developed entirely in the absence of any grazing animals, and which were essentially climatic in origin. Wet and Dry Areas. Roughly expressed, the wetter areas of New Zealand were covered in forest and the drier areas were in natural grassland. Known methods of cultivation and stocking were of no value in bringing into agricultural profit the vast areas of forest-clad country, so it was on the open unforested country that development first took place, and, as these areas occurred mainly in the South Island, that portion of New Zealand showed in the earlier years the greatest advancement. The original farming community, recruited as it

was with excellent British farming experience, rapidly adopted rotational practice on the more fertile, easily ploughable tussock grasslands, and depastured ever-increasing flocks of Me- | rino sheep on the natural tussock areas : where topographical consideration precluded easy ploughing. To begin with, cereals and wool represented the only saleable commodities that did not reach immediate satu- | ration-point, and had it not been for j two factors the agricultural develop- j ment of New Zealand might have remained comparatively insignificant. These two factors were the comparatively early discovery that a good seed-bed for the establishment of pastures of European grasses could be produced by felling and burning the forest, and the later development of coldstorage processes, enabling meat, dairy produce and other perishable products to be exported. Turning Forests Into Pastures. The conversion of forest into grassland without the intervention of the plough represents the first major development in the evolution of New Zealand farming, and has resulted in over 12,000,000 acres of grassland replacing forest. The fire-stick, therefore, became the real emblem of farming progress in New Zealand for many years, rather than the plough, although it was considered that the majority of plougable “bush-burn” country would finally come under some sort of rotational treatment whereby the production of fresh young grass would be connected up with the production of annual crops, either of a cash-sale or animal-feeding type. For many years from 200,000 to 400,000 acres of forested country were annually burned and grass seed sown on the scarcely cooled ash. The forest did not in all cases surrender to the artificially-pro-duced grass invader without a valiant struggle, and a whole range of stocking and secondary-burning technique became developed to cope with the efforts of forest to reassert itself.

Until the development of the freezing industry the artificially-produced bush-burn grasslands and the natural grasslands were essentially used for wool-production. Meat in the quantities in which it could be produced w&s unsaleable; the value of a carcase was measured in terms of the tallow that it could yield, and thus arose the boiling down establishments of both islands. Over the greater part of the bush-burn grassland long-wools—-firstly Linsoin and later Romney—became the dominant breed. The rise of the Romney coincided to a certain extent with the gradual fall in nutritive value of the bush-burn pastures as they passed through suecessional changes tending to a lower standard. Natural and Artificial Pastures. So far as the mountainous natural tussock grasslands are concerned, their history has been one of gradually diminishing fertility, and as their area is large—over 14 million acres—and their production and value low, they j can be viewed w!th out present knowledge as probably a potentially decreasing asset in connection with farming, unless better feeding types of ve- j

getation can be established on them at a nominal cost. Investigation in this direction, however, has not been by any means encouraging. On the other hand, it is far otherwise with the sown grasslands of the country, which, with th&ir companion annual stockfeeding crops (themselves now steadily decreasing in proportion), comprise some 18 million acres. This area of sown grassland at the present time is | only slowly extending in comparison with the bush-burn days, as most of the virgin country still to be won to payable grass is mainly almost of a sub-marginal character, particularly during eras of falling prices. Money Return from Pasture. The main production from this 18 million acres consists of meat, wool and butter-fat, and by-products, such as hides, pelts, etc., connected therewith. The sown grasslands of the Dominion are responsible for an annual output of roundly 250,000 tons of meat (mutton and lamb 300,000 tons, beef 30,000 tons, pork 20.000 tons), 70,000 tons of wool, and 140,000 tons of butter-fat. Brought to a per-acre basis this means about 301 b. of meat, 91b. of wool, and 171 b. of butter-fat.

With normal prices the present annual value of grassland products exceeds £50,000,000, a figure that could qute easily be doubled by better appreciation and application of scientific grassland-management. The value of such management and all that it stands for is fast becoming recognised not only by the farming community, but also by all commercial political and scientific interests.

Grassland products in the shape of these saleable commodities, primarily elaborated by the cow and the breeding ewe, represent in New Zealand farming the dominant features of production.