LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 March 1943, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Surplus Milling Oats. The Government’s intention to absorb all surplus white milling oats was announced at Christchurch yesterday by the Minister of Supply. Mr Sullivan. “The millers have not yet filled their requirements, and it is as yet uncertain what these might be, because military orders for the year are not yet completed,” the Minister said. “The Minister of Marketing has agreed that his department will accept surplus oats, and how these will be taken over will be notified to the farmers as early as possible.” Rabbit Pest At a meeting of farmers held recently in Masterton, it was decided to call a meeting of all farmers interested in the forming of a rabbit board or boards. At this meeting boundaries will be decided on, and a provisional committee formed to promote and have the petitions signed before a board can be established. In the .meantime, while the weather is dry, farmers should assist in the destruction of the rabbit pest by using pollard, which can be obtained from any firm. The meeting will be held on April 7, at 2 p.m., and it is hoped there will be a representative attendance of those farmers who are getting too many rabbits on their properties. A Public Nuisance. ’A soldier, Harold Francis Beverly Fogden, aged 32, was sentenced to two years’ reformative detention by Mr J. H. Luxford, S.M., in Auckland, on a charge which deemed him a rogue and vagabond in that he was found by night with his face masked and wearing rubber shoes with felonious intent. The police stated that Fogden rattled on the window of a house and looked inside. He repeated the action two hours later, and was caught by the occupant of the house. He was wearing a mask and rubber shoes. The magistrate described accused as “a public nuisance,” and said that it was the third time he had been before the Court on a similar charge. Cultivation of Wheat. Details of a scheme to provide from the army tractor drivers and teamsters for the cultivation of the wheat crop were announced by the Minister of Supply, Mr Sullivan, at Christchurch yesterday, in speaking to a meeting of wheat committee representatives. Labour for cultivation presented a different problem, he said, but he had that day discussed a scheme with th'e representatives of the Army and the National Service Department, and he was sure that the arrangements now made for labour for cultivation would work just as satisfactorily as those for the harvest. “Under the scheme arrived at between us,” the Minister said, “the Army and the National Service Department have definitely assured me that all the farmer has now to do is to apply to the district manpower officer, either direct or through any member of the primary production council district committee. Tractor drivers and teamsters will be promptly found from the armed forces by the National Service Department and directed to wheatgrowing.”