Land and Production

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 295, 5 March 1928, Page 8

Land and Production

Auckland’s Diverse Interests Nearly 400,000 Dairy Cows in Province NEW ZEALAND’S increased wheat yield, to which the Minister of Agriculture alluded with gratification when speaking at Karaka on Monday, owes little to the Auckland Province. Of 220,000 acres under wheat last summer, Auckland’s share was barely 200. Even so, the Auckland Province is still foremost among the productive territories of the Dominion. Orchards, vineyards, market gardens and nurseries prosper, and are increasing in extent.

ANLY one county in New Zealand, and that is Waimea (Nelson) has a greater list of orchards than Waitemata, which has 3,300 acres planted in fruit trees. The vineyards of Auckland lead the rest of New Zealand. Waitemata County has 76 acres of vines, Waikato County 66, and Hawke’s Bay, the next in order, 50. Round each of the four large centres in New Zealand are grouped important market gardens. The area of those supplying Auckland City is ap-

proximately 800 acres. Pukekohe potatoes and Waikato root-crops are unexcelled, but the area actually laid out for quantity production is exceeded in both Nelson and Cailterbury. Waimea County, Nelson, has 800 acres in veegtables every year, as well as 5,000 acres cultivated for fruit. Canterbury’s market gardens are 1,300 acres in area. A feature in Auckland is the immense area set apart for forestry purposes. North of Auckland City the area planted amounts to 3,000 acres. To the south, mainly in Matamata County, the area is 13,000 acres. Some of this property is planted by private afforestation concerns, some by the Government and some by mining companies interested in the production of special timber for pit-props and other purposes. THE WHEAT CROP New Zealand’s wheat crop, mentioned by Mr. Hawken, is nowadays produced almost entirely in Canterbury, where some of the Big landowners have a habit of switching

periodically from wheat to sheep, and back again. In the Ashburton Count} of Canterbury there were nearly 50,000 acres under wheat last summer. The share of the Canterbury province as a whole in the 220,000 acres devoted to wheat-growing in Xew Zealand for the season "was 181,500 acres. Otago was next, with 27,844 acres, and Wellington led the North Island provinces with 1,816. largelv contributed by Rangitikei County, where 800 acres is sown in wheat every year. Auckland’s wheat Interest is extremely moderate. Seventeen acres of wheat were cropped in Manukau country last summer, and 4S acres in Franklin County. Fourteen acres were under wheat in the Waipa County, but elsewhere in the province the attention paid to wheat-growing was negligible. South Auckland was concerned much more actively with its dairy herds, which are increasing in number (and productivity) year by year. The number of dairy-cows in the Auckland province was. at the last census thereof, some 382,000. Taranaki, next among the dairy zones had 147,000, and the Wellington province 112,000. Auckland’s predominance in the dairying industry is very clear. In South Auckland, alone, there are 266,500 dairy cows. The leading county is Piako, with 50,000, followed by Waikato, with 40,000, and Matamata, with 37,000. Six thousand milking machine plants, capable of handling 28,000 cows simultaneously, are in use in the milking sheds of the progressive Auckland dairy-farmers. ON THE WOOL-TRACK In the shearing-sheds the proposition is different. Though Auckland has as many shearing plants as Hawke’s Bay and Canterbury, their capacity is less than those in the sheep-grazing provinces. There are few 10 and 12-stand shearing plants in the Auckland province, hut any number of them in Hawke’s Bay and Canterbury. In the North Auckland district the average area of a farm is 213 acres. South of Auckland the average is 338 acres. In Wairoa County, north of Gisborne, the average rises to 1,408 acres; it is 429 in Hawke’s Bay, where the quality of the land is high, and 1,077 in Patangata, a county of large sheepruns. The same tendencies are evident in Wanganui County, Rangitikei. and Akitio. In Canterbury the size of the properties is indicated by the high average areas in Amuri (4,627 acres) and Tawera (4,566 acres). Some of this includes unproductive and sterile country, but the size of the flocks indicates large Individual Interests. The county with the highest average of occupied area is further south still. This is Fiord County, Southland, where the average is colossal—--18,000 acres. But there is only one occupied property in the county!