BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, SEPT. 11, 1950 ADVENT OF AERIAL TOP-DRESSING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 94, 11 September 1950, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, SEPT. 11, 1950 ADVENT OF AERIAL TOP-DRESSING

Though aerial top-dressing is a common-place now in most parts of the North Island, it is about to make its first appearance in the Eastern Bay. Its advent must be looked on as being of great importance to the district.

Even in this fertile, prosperous area, farm production is not all that it could be with the use of scientific methods. Big areas of hill land are producing only a fraction of what could be taken from them. Production is today’s answer to economic trends —the means of ensuring national stability and of helping to ensure international price security. Bay of Plenty has, in recent years, been as productive as most parts of the country and here is its chance to improve its output still further. The slow but most certain deterioration of high country through erosion and inadequate fertilisation has become a national problem of great significance and aerial topdressing has become, largely, its answer. There is a school of thought which believes the land’s natural covering, grass, to be even more effective than is timber.

Top-dressing from the air is still expensive but expense is largely offset by efficiency. In any case, costs are tending to fall as top-dressing firms recover the heavy outlay necessary for their establishment and as competition increases. Hill country farmers in this district will know what to do.