BETTER PASTURES

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20463, 1 April 1938, Page 9

BETTER PASTURES

! GRASSLAND RESEARCH NEW BUILDING OPENED DEVELOPMENT REVIEWED (Special to Times.) PALMERSTON N., Thursday. The necessity for the co-ordination of grassland research with animal husbandry was emphasised by Mr A. H. Cockayne, Director-General of Agriculture, in an address at the opening of the new building of the Grasslands Division of the Plant Research Bureau at Palmerston North this afternoon. Mr Cockayne, who was one of the pioneers of grassland research in New Zealand and the Director of the Plant Research Station until it was transferred to the Scientific and Industrial Research Department two years ago, performed the opening ceremony in the absence of the Minister of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan. “Thirty-four years ago I entered the Department of Agriculture to take charge of the Department’s biological laboratory,” said Mr Cockayne. “It was housed in a single room 10 feet by 12, the salary of its staff of one was £175 rer year, and £IOO a year was allowed for its maintenance. It, lias grown into a scientific organisation, consisting of live divisions, grasslands, agronomy, botany, plant diseases and entomology with a staff of 85 and an expenditure of* £33,000 per annum.” Mr Cockayne emphasised that the work of the Grasslands Division was not only scientific but also essentially practical, and it must be extended if our economic resources were to be fully exploited. Results “Problems in grassland farming we have in plenty, and, although we are proud of our grassland farming in comparison with that in other countries, it is in the economic solution of these problems that our future lies,” he went on. “In our grassland work pertinent to soils of high fertility or potentially so, we are in fair shape. On. this type of land top-dressing, strain development of high producing grasses and clovers, and actual grassland management are achieving profitable results, but in the maintenance and improvement of our more difficult grassland, the tussock areas and much low-grade hill country, the position is far from satisfactory, and cries aloud for research. “Perhaps the most serious aspect so far as grassland is concerned,” concluded Mr Cockayne, is the lag that has taken place in the proper co-ord-ination of research from the animal aspect as distinct from the pasture aspect. If we are going to develop full utilisation o.f our present and future grasslands, it is research into grassland farming in its entirety, where the soil, the plant, the animal and the farmer are all taken into consideration, that must be developed.”