THE HEMP INDUSTRY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2234, 3 February 1921, Page 1

THE HEMP INDUSTRY.

Travellers by train on the Manawatu line cannot have failed to notice the broad areas in flax —phormiuin tenax, to give it its proper name. These flax swamps have yielded many hundreds of thousands of pounds in returns to all those connected with one of the principal primary industries of the Dominion, and most of those returns have been expended on labour. For several years past a mysterious disease has afflicted the flax in the Manawatu swamps, and it has been noticed in isolated cases elsewhere. Its cause is still a matter of scientific investigation, but very little is really known about it, and, what is more important, the prospects of coping with it are no nearer now than when the disease first made its -appearance. The hemp and tow production for the twelve months ended 31st December, 1920, was 107,611 bales, or nearly 12,000 bales less than in 1919. The greatest quantities of the flax graded in the Dominion pass through Wellington and Foxton. The flax industry, then, is an essentially local industry for Wellington. It is now threatened with extinction, for swamp owners and flaxmillers concur in regarding this “yellow leaf" disease as difficult, if not impossible, to cure. If they abandon flaxgrowing and turn the lands over to grazing and' dairying, as they may have to do, they will relinquish an industry that has paid a large weekly wages bill for very many years past, and, besides, be compelled to expend a very substantial amount of money upon making the swamps suitable for purposes other than flaxgrowing. The position that has arisen in the flax industry through the blight is a very serious one, especially for Wellington. But it is being taken in hand with courage and enterprise by the Manawatu Millers’ Association, and it is to be hoped that their efforts to save it will be successful. —Post.