SOIL EROSION IN SOUTH CANTERBURY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20768, 1 July 1937, Page 13

SOIL EROSION IN SOUTH CANTERBURY

To tlie Editor of “ The Timaru Herald.

Sir—Your sub-leader on soil erosion in Tuesday's issue deserves the concentrated attention of the whole of South Canterbury. As trustees for those who come after us, soil erosion and river damage are two of the gravest problems that we have to deal with these presept days.. For years past, some of us have raised a warning voice as to the process of denudation that was going on, but as the peril was not immediate; people went on with their everyday avocation and quickly forgot the lessons staring them in the face after every flood, and the effect of windstorms and cloudbursts on the newly worked fine tilth of the down farm lands. With the knowledge we now possess after seventy years of agricultural farming in South Canterbury, it would have been better if a large proportion of our steeper downlands had never a plough put into them. Where a ridge or facing is too steep to plough in “lands” it should not be ploughed at all, otherwise the round and round ploughing will fill up the gullies with the ptek of th. black surface soli and strip the top of the ridge to the bare clay. Then when October nor’-west hurricanes blow the whole district may be greyblack with tremendous clouds of best soil blown from the newly worked paddocks. The writer has first hand knowledge of many properties which have suffered from this form of denudation.

But probably the greatest factor In the denudation process on our farm lands is the cloudburst effects in December and January on finely worked paddocks, ready for turnip and rape sowing. The whole of the downlands throughout South Canterbury are subject and liable to this terrible erosion any summer, and the better the farming method as represented in the fine tilth the greater the loss of soil. The writer has seen whole gullies and big hollows filled up with the picked black soil swept down by these cloudbursts; and all in a few minutes. The cropping craze of the seventies and eighties went beyond all reason In cultivating light rolling ridges that should never have been ploughed but established in surface sowings with cocksfoot and white clover.

And so the process continues uninterrupted. Who cares? Anything that is awkward or gives us brain fog leave to the State! Why worry? It will do our day, and if we use up all our natural resources and conserve nothing, it is only a “mug” that would act otherwise. And a disunited South Canterbury does nothing.—l am, etc.. T. D. BURNETT.