THE RURAL WORLD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 528, 21 December 1912, Page 6

THE RURAL WORLD.

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. ANUNAL REPORT. NEW ZEALAND TRADE. In a country like New Zealand, where the great bulk of the wealth is produced from the soil, the ordinary rules governing trade cannot apply, so great is the effect of weather conditions on productive capacity. Given favourable climatic influences, upon which the majority of people base their calculations, a fair balance of exports over imports may be expected, but with seasons like those of the two past years all calculations are upset. In New Zealand bad seasons are the rare exception. Primary producers are accustomed to climatic conditions devoid of extremes, which make rural occupations in some lands of a more or less precarious nature. They are encouraged in consequence to stock their farms to their full carrying capacity. The effect of unpropitious weather is therefore serious in its con sequences, especially as there is no housing of stock, which are maintained on pasture from season to season. Adverse climatic conditions being exceptional little provision is made for the untoward circumstances. While the farmer is unvarably ill prepared for unseasonable weather, the city merchant provides for season? of advancing prosperity. Thua with a bad season followed by one unsuitable to several phases of rural activity, the figures showing the export and import trade of the Dominion do not reflect the actual state of tha country's prosperity. A fact to be remembered that New Zealand is still in the process of nation building, and tthat, while the country is in the throes of development, private and national expenditure is taking place in opening up country which has yet to reach a productive stage and cannot therefore add its quota to the volume of production. The wealth resulting from the present pioneering expendiure will add considerably to the exports of future years; but in the meantime the imports are being swelled without much if any corresponding addition to the exported wealth. In an established country, where no development work is in progress, a fairly definite conculsiun can bs drawn from the figures giving the imports and exDorta. Here the position is different. Customs figures are no reliable guide to the country's financial standing, but are more usefui as an index to the rate at which the industries of the country are expanding. A striking instance of the dependence of agriculture on favourable climatic conditions is afforded by the experience of beekeepers this year. Owing to the wet spring and early summer, conditions all antagonistic to bees doing successful work, the production of honey is only a third of that of last year, whereas, with the extension taking place in the business, it should have been considerably more. Thus the wealth produced by this minor industry is only about £16,000 instead cf over £50,000. The only fair criterion of national stability is to take the figures over a series of years. If this be done in our own case, it will be found that our exports exhibit a satisfactory advance on imports. Consideration of the position of the past few years shows that circumstances combined to make the actual figures a false barometer. The financial stringency three and four years ago led to a reduction of imports, and, when the position improved, merchants imi ported heavily to replenish their depleted stocks. At this time, however, a cycle of unpopitious seasons commenced,. The dry summer of 1910-11 caused a heavy decline in production, the industry of dairying being particularly affected, disastrously so in one or two districts. Probably anticipating a recovery in rural production, the importations of 1911-1?. were a'so based en a normal demand. Again, unfavourable weather upset calculations. This time the sheep raising industry was the one most seriously affected. Excessive moisture in the spring and early summer, following a winter in which feed was unusually scarce, led to a heavy mortality among the sheep flocks, which has seriously reduced the amount of mutton and wool available for export. The unseasonable spring and summer also affected to a considerable extent the amount of milk produced. Thus, notwithstanding that a greater area of country has been brought into occupation that solid advance has been made in the methods in vogue for extracting wealth from the soil and that generally everything pointed to increased rural wealth adverse climatic conditions have upset all calculators and brought about a temporary decline in the rate of wealth production which no one could foresee or guard against.

LUCERNE FOR SILAGE.

LOSS OF PROTEIN. In some careful experiments carried out by tne Victorian Department of Agriculture to ascertain-the changes or losses in forage during the process of ensiling, it wa3 found, among other features, says the Sydney Telegraph, that there was a loss of nearly 50p er cent, of the true protein in lucerne in nine weeks. Fresh lucerne is particularly rich in the valuable protein constituent as compared with ordinary fodder. The experimenters, as a result of this te3t, regard it as a waste of this test, regard protein to convert lucerne into silage. "Protein," they state, "is the expensive constituent in a fodder. In the case of maize or ordinary cereals there is 50 to 66 per cent, less protein to start f WJith. ..These,.,.,„therefore, are crops;

with an inevitable loss of food materials. But the loss during ensiling falls more heavily upon certain of the constituents of foods than upon others. From these experiments it seems to fall heavily upon the proteins. And, as lucerne is particularly rich in protein, it seems better that lucerne should be cured aa hay rather than ensilage. Such hay forms an admirable addition to silage made from less nitrogenous fodder, 3uch as wheat, oats, or maize."

BONES

The manurial value of bones was known in quite the early stages of the development of scientific agriculture, and it is said that they were first systematically employed from about the year 1770. Their popularity ha 3 always been great among British farmers. Sir John Bennett Lawes said that his attention was first attracted to the advantage of artificial manures in consequence of his observing the good effect of bones on the turnip crop. Liebig was very indignant at the exportation of bones from Germany to England, and his wrath exploded in words which cannot be characterised as polite. He wrote: England is robbing all other countries of the condition of their fertility; in her eagerness for bones she has turned up the battlefields of Leipsic. of Waterloo, and of the Crimea; from the catacombs of Italy she has carried away the skeletons of many successive generations Annually she removes from the shores of other countries to her own, the manurial equivalent of 3,500,000 of men, whom ana takes from us, the means of supporting, and squandering down her sewers to the sea. Like a vampire she hangs on the neck of Europe—nay, of the entire world! and sucks the heart blood from nations without a thought of justice towards them, without a shadow of advantage to herself. At the present time it would be possible to make an effective retort, because Germany now takes annually from Britain large quantities of sulphate of ammonia and basic slag, which could be used with benefit on our crops. The greater part of the bones collected in this country and imported are treated with acid, and thus cunverted into the more soluble and generally useful form, of dissolved bonfis and bone compounds, applied with advantage to root crops and pastures. An American professor who made a special study of the available phosphoric acid in bone meal wrote that the nature and composition of animal bones is such as U> maka it a valuable source of phosphoric acid, and it gradually gives up nitrogen and phosphoric acid to the plant, and its forms and chemical conditions are such that it forms in the soil during the growing season no compounds more insoluble than athe bone itself. Experiments have shown that the phosphoric acid in fine steamed bone may all become available in the soil undera verage conditions, in one or two seasons, while that in the coarse, fatly raw bone is not completely used in three or lour years, and sometimes longer.

Although the phosphoric acid in bone is regarded as insoluble the methods of treatment cause a portion of it to become soluble in citrate of ammonia, in which case it is believed to be quite as readily available to plants as the reverted or dicalcic form which exists to a greater or less extent in mineral superphosphate. The availability of the posporic acid has been studied for the past two seasons, and the average percentage of the available is shown to be 28.6 per cent. By available is meant the actual percentage soluble in citrate of ammonia, and, therefore, presumably available in one season. The whole of the phosphate in thß bone becomes eventually available but the above portion of the total phosphate is in a condition to be quickly utilised by the plant, Thus it may be said that about onefourth of the phosphoric acid used in fine bene meal is in an available form and the finer and softer the bone tne greater the degree of availability.—Mark Lane Express.