TOBACCO CULTURE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 180, 11 July 1884, Page 2

TOBACCO CULTURE.

Of all industrial plants suitable to the climate of New Zealand, tobacco appears to be in every way the most promising. As the plant has been grown in all parts of the colony on a small scale for the last twenty years or more, we have now ample evidence that almost every part of the country is capable of producing tobacco of the highest excellence, and that some districts can produce samples inferior in no respects to the best samples from Cuba or Virginia. Unfortunately the Legislature has been so shortsighted as to put a heavy tax on Colonial grown tobacco, and so has prevented cultivation extending as it ought to have done throughout the colony. The recent establishment of a tobacco factory in Auckland and the more favorable state of the present excise laws leads, however, to the inference that the tide has turned, and that New Zealand grown tobacco will soon be used by the people of the Colony to the exclusion of the imported kinds. Perhaps the legislature will have the good sense to abolish the remainder of the excise duty, and allow the free and unrestriced growth and manufacture of the “weed” within the Colony. If this is done there is every reason to believe that tobacco will, in a very few years, become a staple export of New Zealand. Tobacco requires a fairly rich soil to _ yield heavy crops, and the most suitable is certainly a rich light loam, such as would yield good crops of potatoes or turnips. Stiff clays or dry shingly soils are equally unsuitable. There are many thousands of acres of land in the colony well suited to the growth of the “weed” and no doubt they will some day be largely devoted to its culture, It has been found by experience that the crop requires a moderately moist climate during the early stages of its growth, and a dry sunny one as the leaves mature, and consequently the climate of the greater part of the colony is admirably suited, Though large crops of tobacco have been grown in England and Ireland, yet, owing to the dampness of the autumn in those countries the quality of the produce was inferior and consequently Great Britain will ever continue to import her supplies of this commodity from other countries and no good reason exists why New Zealand should not share in such a profitable trade. The cultivation of tobacco is not by any means difficult, but it nevertheless requires care and attention to produce really good and profitable crops. In conclusion it is well to remark that if this industry is to be established in New Zealand, due caution must be exercised. Nobody should rush into the thing on a large scale, but the industry must be built up slowly and steadily. Sheltered positions are best for tobacco fields, as high winds injure the crop by tearing the leaves.