The Timaru Herald MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1937 POTENTIALITIES OF SCIENTIFIC IRRIGATION

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20891, 22 November 1937, Page 8

The Timaru Herald MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1937 POTENTIALITIES OF SCIENTIFIC IRRIGATION

Although irrigation as a means of providing rural areas with carefully regulated supplies of fertilising waters in which they are deficient, because of lack of rain or failure of natural water supplies, has been practised from very early times, and year by year fresh discoveries are made that carry human knowledge into the earliest history of Egypt, it must be confessed that in spite of the favourable verdict of the centuries, no scheme of irrigation that has ever been suggested has been received without incurring the opposition of some sceptical members of the rural population. It is therefore refreshing, particularly to progressive communities in Canterbury and Nortli Otago, who have felt the scorching breath of periodical droughts and have suffered in long spells of dry weather aggravated by successions of hot parching winds, to note the enthusiastic and practical support of irrigation that is being given by the Minister of Public Works. “Canterbury alone could feed New Zealand if scientifically irrigated at a cost which the farmers could meet,” declared the Minister the other day in outlining the plans which have been formed by the Public Works Department for investigating the possibility of extending irrigation. The Minister, whose practical turn of mind has forced him to say by way of explanation that “there is only one justification for irrigation, and that is to increase the farmers output at a cost that would leave him an increased income, after the payment of water charges,” is merely emphasising the judgment of history. It is not too much to say that the very life of Egypt depends on its irrigation, and ancient as this irrigation is, it was never practised on a really scientific system till after the British occupation. As every one knows the valley of the Nile outside of the tropics is practically devoid of rainfall. Yet it was the produce of this valley that formed the chief granary of the Roman Empire. The history of Egypt tells the story of the evolution of scientific irrigation from the somewhat crudely constructed Mougel barrage to the creation of that stately and imposing structure, the Assuan Dam, with its nearly 1| miles of length with a conservation capacity of 3,750,000 million cubic feet of water, creating a lake extending up the Nile Valley for about 200 miles.

In India, the most disastrous famine in the history of that troubled country may be considered as the commencement of the new era of irrigation in India. The natives regarded the scourge of famine as the punishment that had to be endured to satisfy the angry gods. In the province of Marcia, in Spain, watered by the river Segura, is a dam 25 feet high said to be 800 years old, while in the jungles of Ceylon are to be found remains of gigantic Irrigation dams and on the neighbouring mainland of Southern India, and throughout the provinces of Madras and Mysore, the country is covered with irrigation reservoirs.

The opening of the twentieth century during Mr Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency the new “conservation” policy to which he gave so much impetus and encouragement brought the extension of irrigation works in the United States to the forefront of American statecraft. And so on down the years which have witnessed millions and still more millions of acres being brought iuto a higher state of cultivation by the construction of irrigation works, providing for the application of fertilising water applied to thirsty lands. In many countries immense difficulties have been overcome because of the need for provision to conserve water and costly dams have had to be constructed. But in Canterbury, where the needs are admittedly great in dry seasons, the field is open for considerable extension of irrigation schemes and it is hoped that there will be no lack of response to the Minister’s appeal to the people of Canterbury to realise the immense productive potentialities of hundreds of thousands of acres of land that might some day, as the scope of operations are extended, be brought under the fertilising touch of scientifically designed irrigation schemes.