Grassland Research Advances
A major step forward, both for the Department and the industry as a whole was the setting up of the Plant Research Station in Palmerston North. The establishment of something along these lines had been strongly supported in the Heath report (as had the creation of the Dairy Research Institute and the Wheat Research Institute at Lincoln) and with the formation of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in 1926, the ownership and management of the station raised issues that had to be resolved. The Plant Research Station represented the practical expression of the goals that had been vaguely formulated more than ten years before for the Central Development Farm at Levin, but with Massey now providing the teaching component. Marsden, the new head of DSIR was probably a better person at gathering support for research activities than were Reakes or Cockayne, but he would also have gained Prime Minister Coates’ backing. A major consideration would have been the arrangement, entered into in 1927 with the support of the Colonial Secretary, L S Amery, for financial assistance from the Empire Marketing Board in the form of a direct grant of £2,500 plus £2,500 annually for five years. Seed and plant research were to be co-ordinated with that being undertaken at Aberystwth Plant Breeding Station, and subsequently a plant scientist, William Davies, attached to this institution, was seconded to Palmerston North. He was closely involved in the trials leading up to the identification and subsequent multiplication of pure strains of what was then known as Hawkes Bay ryegrass. A similar investigation soon after identified a superior strain of white clover.
Cockayne declared that the main reason for the shift of activities to Palmerston North was the need for land for experimental work (AJHR 1928). He also stated that it was intended to integrate the rest of the Biology Section and the Fields Division into the new organisation, though what this latter statement implied is not clear. The Farm Economics section did not move. Fawcett would not have found the move satisfactory for someone who aimed to occupy the top position there was a need to stay close to the corridors of power. Critics of dual administration would have felt justified when, in 1929, Cockayne was appointed Assistant Director-General following Pope’s retirement in 1928. He retained his position as Director of the Plant Research Station, the new Fields Division’s Director being J W [John] Deem, who had joined the Department as a stock inspector in the early 1890s
An indicator of the changes that had taken place is apparent in Cockayne’s 1929 report in which he again stressed the importance of grassland management (AJHR 1929). He declared that "increased production is admittedly the key factor in developing and stabilising our prosperity. So far as our great land heritage is concerned, by far the greatest potentiality towards increasing production lies along the lines of better production and better utilisation of our grass crop. In other words, it is on the expansion of grassland products primarily elaborated from grass by the ewe and the cow to which New Zealand farming should be mainly directed".
Besides the need for more topdressing, Cockayne listed factors required for expansion as including more stock, more fencing and more effective stock water supplies, more conservation of summer grass and the use of better pasture strains. Ensilage was perceived as being one of the weakest links in the chain and it must become one of the strongest. Cockayne was well aware of a problem faced by progressive farmers. Top dressing made possible increased stock numbers, but extra stock meant that additional winter feed had to be conserved. The machines to do this were much the same as 20 to 30 years earlier. The importance of pasture strains was again emphasised two years later by Bruce Levy, writing in his capacity as agrostologist, "The work of the past year has definitely opened up a new avenue for advancement in grassland production...the concept of strain and pedigree in herbage plants has given a new stimulus and afforded greater vision into the possibilities of permanent pasture. Good strains of herbage plants will cheapen as well as increase production and will tend to level out and spread better the total yearly grass crop" (AJHR 1931).
He went on to say that trials had shown that New Zealand pasture strains — Hawkes Bay ryegrass, NZ wild white clover, NZ cocksfoot and NZ browntop — had to be proved best under local conditions and that the certification system was helping not only the farmer, but the research worker.
Seed testing advances: Seed testing had been a function carried out by the Biology Section since the beginning of the century and legislation to encourage the production of pure seed or rather to discourage the sale of contaminated seed had been considered a number of times. These proposals, however, were of limited importance and the first practical steps were taken by Lincoln College; in 1915 farmers were able to purchase a variety of seed wheat "College Hunters" with an assurance that it was a pure strain. Hilgendorf extended his work at Lincoln to oats and to cocksfoot and during the 1920’s some financial assistance was provided by the Department.
The Department’s short-lived seed farm at Moa Flat near Roxburgh, a place originally used as a training farm for ex-soldiers, was intended to produce seed for fodder crops, but it did not operate long enough to have much effect. But the man in charge, J W Hadfield, later joined the Wheat Research Institute after a stint at the Plant Research Station at Palmerston North.
With the identification of Hawkes Bay ryegrass in 1929 the way was open for the establishment of a certification and multiplication system. A 1926 Lincoln graduate, J [Jack] Claridge, set in train the organisation of the system and was able to make use of the procedures that Hilgendorf and Calder had developed at Lincoln.
In all his reports, Cockayne praised the work being done by instructors in the field, the value that farmers placed on them and the need to increase their numbers as financial resources and trained men became available. No attempt was made to describe the general philosophy underlying extension work, or the techniques used on a day to day basis, and it would seem that instructors had to develop their methods as best they could.. Obviously they would have drawn upon the experience of progressive farmers in their district or helped farmers "to look over the fence". As an example, closer subdivision and rationed grazing were well established as the basis of dairy farm management in the Waikato and Taranaki when Fawcett carried out his survey in the late 1920s. Such systems would have been rare ten years earlier.
Soil testing and Bush Sickness 1920-1930: Initially, Aston’s Chemistry Division was set up to provide a back-up service for the other Divisions such as tests of milk. fertilisers, soils, toxic substances, and animal tissues. Before joining the Department, Aston had worked for some years as a chemist in a cement factory and had also developed an interest in botany and plant ecology. On coming to Wellington, he established a close working relationship with the newly appointed Professor of Chemistry at Victoria, Easterfield, and was able to use the University College’s laboratory to supplement the limited facilities provided by the Department.
Of special long term interest was his programme of soil testing. A lot of samples were tested for farmers who considered they had soil fertility problems and the results of these tests may at least have encouraged them to apply fertiliser if they could afford it. Soil analysis was an obvious part of the "bush sickness" investigation when it became obvious that the problem was not the result of any type of infection. Aston focused his attention from the early 1900s on the possibilities of iron deficiency as it was apparent the animals were suffering from a type of anaemia despite the uncertainty created by Gilruth’s experiment in 1899. Emphasis was also laid on heavy top dressing with various types of phosphatic fertilisers. The results provided a certain amount of encouragement, but fell well short of a solution. Aston was more confident perhaps than the results justified; in evidence presented to a Parliamentary Committee in 1911 and again in 1912 which examined the potentialities of pumice country for pastoral production, he expressed confidence that the development of such country would pay off using the methods he had suggested. But he was over-optimistic about the effectiveness of his treatment measures and under-estimated the cost of development.
His investigations were at least focussing attention on longer term considerations. In 1905, he wrote in his annual report "The question of undertaking a systematic soil survey of New Zealand should be seriously considered" and he drew attention to the type of work that was being done in America (AJHR 1905). He expanded his views in 1907 when he suggested that a rough classification of soils could be based on a consideration of:
- climatic conditions
- surface conditions
- geological origin
- physical and chemical characteristics
- vegetative cover, and
- economic adaptation.
Some scepticism was also expressed by Aston as to the value of the field trials being undertaken partly because of the difficulties in supervising them.
Bush sickness investigations continued on a modest scale during the early 1920s, being more or less confined to Aston’s efforts to find some iron derivative that could be made available to stock without too much time and effort. Drenches containing ferro ammonium citrate seemed to help; it could also be incorporated in pellets, and efforts were also made to find a means of incorporating iron in stock licks. Iron mixed in with the fertiliser needed in large quantities on pumice soils did nothing for stock health. Aston’s confidence that the problems were largely overcome remained boundless, but Lyons, the Livestock Division’s Director, writing in 1928 was more restrained. He stated that, "Any ordinary intelligent farmer with a knowledge of this country could take over the Government farm at Manakau and run it as a dairy farm with every prospect of his operations meeting with success. In the light of our experience, however, we are hardly yet justified in advising settlers to take up this land as a farming proposition". Lyons went on to draw attention to the very high cost of developing the land and though iron salts acted as a curative agent for cattle it had not been demonstrated that the addition of iron salts to the soil would act as a preventative (AJHR 1928). Lending agencies were also sceptical and during the 1920s large areas between Putaruru and Taupo were planted in trees.
Research work was intensified after 1926 with a grant of £2,000 annually for five years by the Empire Marketing Board. Equal contributions came from the Department of Agriculture and the newly established DSIR, the objective being to work on mineral deficiencies not only in the centre of the North Island, but also in parts of Nelson and Southland. The Cawthron Institute took over research in the those latter areas. One of the first tasks undertaken was a soil survey which led to the mapping of the various ash showers determining the character of soils from the Waikato to Hawkes Bay. It was also the forerunner of a national survey.
A visit by Dr J B Orr in 1927 of the Rowett Institute at Aberdeen, who was also interested in mineral deficiencies, provided additional encouragement for research workers. Dr [later Sir John] Orr later became famous for his international campaigns against malnutrition and his work at FAO.
In 1929, Aston indicated that pellets containing iron ammonium citrate had been fed to sheep with encouraging results, but a year later he admitted a satisfactory way of getting sheep to eat them had not been found. But the breakthrough actually came in 1930: in his annual report for 1931 Aston wrote, "Analysis of the herbage produced by pot experiments with limonite from Whangarei showed that its incorporation with pumice soil did not increase the amount of iron taken up by the plant. Possibly however, a use will be found for the limonite as an ingredient for stock licks for providing iron directly to the animals. Stock feeding experiments with limonite from Whangarei and from Onekaka are now in progress in the Rotorua district". His optimism was justified and in his 1932 report he drew attention to further developments including, "a large scale and highly successful experiment has been carried out using limonite obtained from a commercial firm which is mixing and grading the soft ore which occurs near Whangarei." It was mixed with salt to form a lick acceptable to sheep and lambs. Aston had tried Onekaka limonite (hydroxide iron) in the early 1920s, but as later experiments showed, the material from that source was ineffective. By 1933 he was saying that "the use of limonite as a lick has became standard farming practice".
Disappointing results on several farms and in one departmental experiment were attributed to the use of limonite "of inferior grade" the latter term not being defined. That same year the DSIR reported that Cawthron investigators had found that sheep drenched with Onekaka limonite did not do as well as even those drenched with a mixture based on Nelson soil. Aston the following year - 1934 - blamed contamination with ground limestone as the reason for some unsatisfactory results. By that stage, information on Filmer and Underwood’s work in Western Australia was coming through, but Aston remained unconvinced, despite the Australian discoveries being confirmed by Cawthron experiments. These showed that limonites effectiveness was determined by its cobalt content, that from Onekaka, having a low proportion of this element.
The bush sickness saga with investigations extending to nearly 40 years is interesting from a number of angles. By more recent standards, the magnitude of the research effort was very modest and for most of the time Aston worked alone or with one or two assistants and had to fit in his bush sickness research into a schedule of routine analytical work as well as well as other demands. His hypothesis of iron deficiency had been established before 1912, and his apparent unwillingness later to consider other possibilities might be thought of as part of his proprietorial interest in the problem and its solution. Yet the work done later at Cawthron by Rigg and Askew would seem also to confirm the view that completely separate research teams are also valuable in that the likelihood of a dominant personality — which Aston certainly was — came too readily to determine the direction that investigations took.
Large scale development of pumice country really got underway in 1931 partly as a means of finding work for some of the unemployed. The availability of limonite and later cobaltised sulphur allowed the development programme to be tackled with greater confidence. Although the key discoveries relating to cobalt deficiency were not made in New Zealand, the bush sickness saga was the first major scientific investigation carried out in New Zealand and the spin-off in terms of knowledge of soils and their character was very great. Soil science became an established discipline during the 1920s, the first international congress being held in Washington in 1927 with Theodore (later Sir Theodore) Rigg from the Cawthron Institute as New Zealand’s representative.
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