PERMANENT PASTURE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20512, 2 September 1936, Page 3

PERMANENT PASTURE

PROFESSOR STAPLEDON’S VIEWS The new gospel of Professor Stapledon, the greatest world authority on grass, that the field must be periodically re-ploughed to keep the pasture at maximum productivity, will probably never be accepted in its entirety in this country, though the progressive farmer will, no doubt, use the temporary pasture more, and will not regard the absolutely permanent pasture as the ideal. Professor Stapleton has studied the grassland problem so Intensively that he is repeatedly making original observations in connection with it. He said recently that animals created their own swards and this to an extent that was not sufficiently appreciated. We see the truth of this In Hawke’s Bay in connection with pig paddocks, not, of course, where the small paddock is regarded as a holding yard for pigs instead of a paddock to provide him with grass. Again, says the Professor, plants create conditions favourable for themselves and their allies. Actively growing roots cannot help but influence soil conditions, thus, for example. it was known that the better grasses tended to reduce soil acidity. The soil is the foundation of pasture, and there is soil and soil just as there is pasture and pasture. Professor Stapledon calls pointed attention to the need of a high-class pasture for a fertile living soil. He says: "Periodically ploughing up activity is better, I am sure, than periodically ploughing up stagnation. If you plough up a fairly good sward you plough up a living thing, and a thing well impregnated with animal excreta (for good swards are always well grazed), a thing alive above and below ground. If you plough up an old matted pasture of inferior grasses you plough up virtually what is a dead thing, and a thing almost innocent of animal excreta. There is an immense amount of research demanded along these lines. All I know is that to plough up and seed down heavily to graze, and to do so again and again, is to improve land to an astounding extent. It is a procedure that I have never known to fail, and it must fie one, therefore, Which sets up and maintains remarkably favourable biochemical processes in the soil.”