VALUE OF LUPINS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 756, 31 August 1929, Page 35

VALUE OF LUPINS

EXPERIENCE IN AUSTRALIA The value of lupins as fodder is the subject of an article in an Australian paper by a New South Wales farmer, who deplores the general lack of knowledge of its virtues on the part of many stockowners. So important is this particular matter in Western Australia, he says, that a group of leading newspapers is offering six prizes, ranging from £SO to £I,OOO, for the best 100 acres cultivated there, where several meritorious varieties have been evolved. Another experienced grower claims that it is impossible to over-praise the lupin as a fodder plant, as in good soils it will give “amazing and almost i immediate results.” An annual leguminous plant, giving heavy yields of nutritious fodder almost equal in value to lucerne, the lupin, he says, will thrive well in almost any class of soil. In first clas3 country it is j said that it will carry four or five i sheep to the acre, and that one patch of very poor, sandy to gravelly soil that at one time would not carry one > sheep to 15 acres, may now be classed as sheep-to-the-acre country. ; Although lupins will in places grow ■ shoulder high, the ideal crop is a i thick stand about 30in. high, when but a single cluster of pods grows on each stem; and many farmers have for a i long time been well aware of its great i merit. It is also stated that several prominent pastoralists who for years had lost practically all their lambs are now great c 'vocates of the lupin. Another farmer with several years’ experience says:-—“The lupin is going to work v aniers in much of Australia’s poor lar i, and especially in the coastal country.” Lupins and Wimmera rye grass can be grown successfully in much less than a 15in. rainfall, and the two together make an almost perfectly-balanced ration, and both can be readily established if necessary. Apart from its great use as a fodder plant, it is one of the best fertilising plants that can be grown. It is well known that in several European countries lupins have been extensively cultivated for a long period, for fodder, for ploughing in to enrich the soil, and also for the beans, which are used as food, and they have converted much barren land into prairie pastures.