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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 421, 18 July 1947, Page 22

Sir,-Sir Theodore Rigg. in his comments unon Sir Stanton Hicks’s address to the Science Congress, seems to have fallen into the very error Sir Stanton warned us against. i.e., over-simplifica-tion and thinking in terms of quantity | instead of quality. Sir Theodrre advances ‘the death-rate of the Chinese Land the death-rate in New Zealand as a measuring stick with which to compare the effect on health of the manuring systems of the two countries. This is an extreme oyer-simplification, leaving out as it does th: other enormous differerces in conditions in the two countries. China is densely populated, and for generations has been ravaged by civil wars. invasion, floods, and dirt diseases with a consequent enormous loss of life unknown in New Zealand. Hence no reliable comparison of the déath > | rates is possible. Sir Theodore then | compares the money value of the goods produced per annum by the Chinese farmer and the New Zealand farmer.

Leaving aside the low exchange value of the Chinese dollar, Sir Stanton Hicks’s argument is that it is not upon the money value of the food we grow that our health depends, but upon its value as food-its health-producing value. Of what avail is it to grow with chemical fertilisers two blades of grass where one grew before if the sheep that eat the two blades become diseased? What is needed is long-term feeding tests of foods grown with chemical fertilisers on the one hand and organic fertilisers on the other, carried right through from animals to man.

E.

SATCHELL

(Auckland).