THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, JANUARY 7, 1929. FIREBLIGHT OR FRUIT?

Wairarapa Age, 7 January 1929, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, JANUARY 7, 1929. FIREBLIGHT OR FRUIT?

In. the immediate future, orchardists throughout the Wairarapa will have to decide what they are goi-ng to do or leave undone towards combating the outbreak or fireblight which is devastating orchards in some parts of the district. Effective and combined district action is needed, and needled badly, at the moment, but it is just as well to recognise that this is only a step towards the national action that must be taken sooner or later if the fruit industry <of the Dominion is to be maintained. On the known and undisputed facts about fireblight, there is something pathetically and almost inexpressibly futile about the varying degrees of regulative repression that are enforced in different parts of this country. The general idea to which the Horticultural Division of the Department of Agriculture is working is •to enforce fairly drastic regulations against fireblight in districts in which fruit-growing has been developed on an important scale but to be content with limited and ineffective measures in districts in which the fruit industry is of small proportions.

Unfortunately for the (success of this otherwise .eminently reasonable plan, fireblighit does not recognise or respect district boundaries, whether they be lines on the map or rivers and mountain ranges. In some fashion, this devastating scourge has jumped into New Zealand from America. It has since extended its ravages over a great part of the North Island. Yet the present attitude of fruit-growers in the South Island apparently is that the problem of combating fireblight is one that does not concern them. They believe, it would seem, that an orchard plague that has jumped the Pacific Ocean will not be inconsiderate enough to jump over Cook Strait. Time will show. It may opt be out of place' meantime to recall the declaration of an American expert, well -acquainted with fireblight. who visited this country some time ago. He said that the only way to keep fireblight out of the South Island was to sink the North Island.

Any effective action against a devastating scourge like fireiblight necessarily will be costly and will raise complications. It is just as natural that the farmer ‘should object to losing his hawthorn hedges as that th!e prchardist should object to having his Orchard devastated by fireblight. It seems highly probable, however, that unless fireblight is fought and beaten it will wipe out. both orchards and hawthorn hedges. This is a question on which a plain pronouncement by the Department of Agriculture would be welcomed. What needs to be detelrrnined is whether an effective campaign against fireiblight—a campaign that will permit orchard industry to make head against the disease—is or is not too costly and troublesome to be undertaken. In determinimg that question it is, of course, reasonable to take account, not only of the present scope and development of orchard industry in this or rhat district, but of the scale the industry might attain if the menace of fireblight were removed. If it is considered that the cost of a really effective campaign against fire blight would be too great, ihe next step may be to advise orchardists to cut their losses and seek some other means of livelihood, and incidentally to save the cost of the Horticultural Division of the Department of Agriculture.