ON THE LAND

New Zealand Tablet, 26 May 1921, Page 43

ON THE LAND

* MARKET REPORTS. ' Two hundred and thirty head of fat cattle were yarded for last week’s market at Burnside, the quality being fair. The sale showed a decline of 10s per head on the previous week’s rates. Prime bullocks made £ls 15s to £l7, 17s 6d, medium £ll 10s to £l4, light from £7, cows and heifers £8 to £9 2s 6d, others from £5. Fat Sheep. —46oo were yarded. Owing to there -being an over-supply of heavyweight wethers and ewes, prices for these were easier by 2s to 2s 6d. Freezing buyers were operating freely for sheep suitable for freezing, prices for this class being firmer by about Is, per head, while medium and inferior were selling at the preceding week’s rates. Prime heavy wethers made 23s 6d to 255, extra to 28s 6d, prime 19s to 21s 9d, medium 15s to 17s 6d, prime ewes 17s 6d to 19s, extra to 26s 3d, medium 12s 6d to 15s, light from 5s 6d. Fat Lambs.—2267 were yarded, the quality being very good. Prime lambs advanced by Is 6d to 2s, while medium and inferior were firm at the previous week’s rates. Pigs. —A good yarding, all classes being well represented. The demand was good, and a clearance was effected at prices well up to late rates. Prices varied from B£d to B|d per lb. There was an improved sale at Addington for practically all classes of stock except beef. Fat Lambs. — were penned. There was a keener sale, and prices averaged 6|d to 7d per lb. Freezing buyers secured all but a few pens. Extra prime lambs up to 23s lid, prime 19s 6d to 22s 6d, medium 17s to 19s 3d, light 10s 7d to 16s 3d. Fat Sheep. — A much better sale, values improving by 2s 6d per head on the preceding week. Extra prime wethers 25s to 275, prime 20s 9d to 24s 7d, medium 17s 9d to 20s 3d, inferior 14s to 17s, extra prime ewes 21s to 26s Id, prime 17s to - 19s 9d', medium 14s to 16s 9d, inferior 9s to 13s 6d. Fat Cattle. —A big yarding and a reduction in values from 20s to 30s per head. Prime beef sold at 33s per 1001 b, but the bulk went* about 27s 6d. A good proportion was passed. - Prime steers £l3 10s to £l6 5s 6d, medium £9 5s to £l3 ss, light £3 10s to £8 10s, prime heifers £8 to £l3 10s, ordinary £4 to £7 Is, prime cows £6 10s to £ls 10s, ordinary £2 15s to £6. Vealers. There was a noticeable falling off in quality. Runners made up to £4, good vealers £2 15s to £3, medium calves £1 2s 6d to £2 10s, small to 17s 6d. Fat Pigs.—Choppers £5 5s to £6, baconers £4 10s to £5 15s (average price per lb to 7-2 d); porkers to 55s (average price per lb 91 to lOd).

FARMS OR GUM-TREES? ■ “Rakau” writes from Rotorua to Quick March: It’s all very well to talk of transforming bare fern land into tall forest, but the raising of new plantations has not been conducted judiciously in this district. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of acres within a few miles of this town growing eucalyptus and exotic pines and larches and similar stuff which could more suitably profitably be devoted to dairy-farming. The other day I walked over the beautiful Waipa Valley, at the back of Whakarewarewa, and saw with regret that the craze for covering good arable soil with imported trees had extended to this level and gently undulating land which in the old days was covered with cultivations of wheat and potatoes and kumara, and even grape-vines. Here in the ’sixties a good old French priest had an oasis in the Maori wilds. At his mission station he made hundreds of gallons of wine from his own grape-vines; and around his little farm the Maoris had large areas of wheat. The old people of Tuhourangi have described to me those industrious years, when the grain when threshed out with flails was carted on sledges up the Pareuru Valley to the store by Roto-Kakahi, and there loaded in canoes and taken 'across the lake, thence again on sledges to the water-mill at the Wairoa, where it was ground into flour. 'Now, all this good agricultural land is covered with foreign trees, many of which are of little use for timber purposes. There is a rich bit of swamp hereabouts which would make an excellent little dairy farm, \ but it was taken over for tree-growing. All this, of course* was done long before the establishment of the present Forestry Department, which is not at all likely to commit such egregious errors of judgment, and from which all we New Zealanders confidently expect highly useful national^.

work. By all means save the native bush. Not another acre of the grand indigenous forest should be felled, except under conditions that would ensure its replacement, and such regions as the Urewera Country should be set aside for absolute protection from axe and saw. But there are parts of the Rotorua-Waiotapu plantations, which, in my earnest opinion, should be converted to farm lands; it is worse than absurd to grow larches and wattles on areas of rich soil which should be growing' grass and root crops and fruit.

THE COST OF PRODUCTION : A NEGLECTED DUTY. What moral is to be drawn from a given circumstance or event depends upon one’s point of view, but to the least meditative dairy-farmer the recent crisis in, the fresh milk trade cannot but seem to have stressed very decidedly one duty that he has to himself neglected duty of forming at least some sort of an idea of the cost of production (says the Freeman’s Journal, Sydney). The necessity of knowing how much a certain commodity costs to produce is only being slowly learnt by the farmer, yet if he lacks this knowledge he must be as helpless to build up a secure and profitable business as to formulate a convincing plea for consideration when the price of his produce comes under discussion. That the dairy-farmer has rarely any idea what it costs him to produce a gallon of milk, or a calf, or even a fodder crop, does not make him the only primary producer open to criticism. The bulk of the farmers in this State (New South Wales) are in exactly similar boxes. It is wonderful with what earnestness the average farmer will study almost every aspect of production except this vital one. At a certain branch of the Agricultural Bureau an officer of the Department of Agriculture had been scheduled to give a lecture to stimulate discussion of matters of greatest local interest. The king crop of the district was potatoes, and on the subject of potatoes some members of the branch were convinced they were in a fair way of cornering the available knowledge. Potatoes, therefore, were discussed from every possible aspect, questions gradually warmed up to a quick-fire, and by 10 o’clock it seemed as if every peculiarity and necessity of the potato had been talked threadbare. The visitor looked at his watch. They had had an instructive talk about potatoes, he remarked, but he was curious about just one thing, and begged to put a question in his turn. How much did it cost them to produce a ton? There was silence, broken at last by. murmurs, little explosions of argument, and finally by rueful laughs that registered the visitor s bull s eye. The demand for this unconsidered trifle of information had the members beaten! Farmers in the district in question have discovered what it costs to produce a ton of potatoes since then and the discovery marked the real birth of a thriving industry.

THE ADVANTAGE OF SUBSOILING. A few years ago (says an exchange) there was considerable discussion as to the advantage or not of subsoiling. No doubt much depends upon the soil and.climate, but the following press report of an experiment carried out by the South Australian Department of Agriculture is of interest: “There is a tillage test in progress, its object being to compare the value of two ploughings per year as against one, and also the effect of subsoiling against tlyjN ordinary six-inch ploughing before planting the trees. This plot was set out in 1909, and until the drought year (1914) all the trees appeared to thrive equally well, but evidently the shallower rooted hole on the non-soiled area told its tale at that stage, and since then the quality of the fruit and growth of the trees show considerable difference when compared with those on the subsoiled area.”