WORN-OUT GRASSLANDS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 191, 11 May 1944, Page 4

WORN-OUT GRASSLANDS

Ploughing-up Advocated (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) PALMERSTON N., May 10. There has been much said lately about the need for more production at the call of Britain, but the first person to tell the farmers how. it is to be done is Mr. E. Bruce Levy, director of the grasslands division, Palmerston North. He advocates the ploughing up of weed-infested, worn-out grasslands, of which there are some millions of acres, and the planting of crops for feeding cows. He told a dairy factory managers conference today that it should be looked upon as criminal to spread the depleted phosphate supplies on these pastures. Fertilizers should be confined, to good grasslands and cropping,, Britain had increased its production off the land by ploughing up millions of worn-out acres till now she was two-thirds self-support-ing. He regretted that in New Zealand no rural, economy had been worked out. The ploughing of 200,000 acres in New Zealand was nothing compared with the 2,000.000 acres brought under the plough by Britain in each of the last three years.