LINSEED CULTIVATION AND USE.

Taihape Daily Times, 31 August 1918, Page 4

LINSEED CULTIVATION AND USE.

Our attention is daily directed to the value and use of linseed cake, or as it is more often called in fbe Old Country, oil-cake, for feeding all kinds of stock, particularly dairy cattle and calves. People.from Britain who have had any connection at all with farming will understand how Important a subject oil cake -and oilmeal is to stock-raisers. Meggitt Ltd., is a firm who/ by the demand which has arisen, have erected oil mills in Australia, where they find the demand so great that they have had to encourage extended growth of the linseed plant. In Britain one occasionally comes across hundreds of acres of linseed, which, when in bloom, is an expanse of heavenly blue of great beauty. Every part of the plant above ground except leaves is of economic value, the stems furnishing the beautiful fibre from which linen fabric is made. The seed is harvested and very much of it goes to the oil-mills which are dotted ail over the country. In the mills huge stones crush it into a fine silky meal, which is put into small bags, and these bags of meal are put into presses, of which there are several tiers one above the otherj and pressure descends upon them until it becomes equivalent to two or three hundred tons. Around the presses are gutters which rapidly become-the holders of little ' streams ; of the oil that oozes out .of the ideal after the maximum pressure has done its work. In only a few minutes the presses rise, enabling the caked meal to be taken out and fresh bags inserted. The bags are peeled off. the cake which, after a little trimming .of edges by the deft use of a curved knife, is carried off by road, rail 'and sea to farms where there is an ever-growing demand for it. But this is how the youth of forty or fifty years ago used to watch oil and oii-cake being made, and it is not unlikely more economic and expeditious methods have come into use in later years. We mention old methods to emphasise the fact that oil-cake has been a staple food for cattle for many generations, and is not in any sense a new-fangled something offered to, farmers.for the,,sheer purpose of exploiting./ Our fathers used the cake, but present day farmers are coaxed |to buy costly products in many of which oil meal forms the base. It is remarkable that in all countries where wheat is largely grown, the soil is ideal for linseedgrowing, and the profit from one Is about the same as the other. In Australia Meggitt alone requires some twenty thousand tons of linseed. In addition to what is grown in England .nearly four million quarters are an'nually imported, , The United States has become a large producer of linseed, but that country still imports some four hundred thousand tons annually. The subject has become of increasing interest in New Zealand, because this country is wholly dependent on other countries for the linseed i oil required in trade, industries, and even medicine, as well as for the linseed meal which finds its way into the manufacture of various cattle foods now on the market. Linseed is net a good stock food until the oil is expressed, but with the oil removed it becomes a food for calf-rearing alongside which nothing can compare for food value and cheapness. Tne needs of New Zealand are becoming increasingly greater year by year, and in the very near future, if they do not at the present time, farmers will have the advantage of growing their own linseed forced upon them; for exportation it is now quite as profitable Co grow as wheat