One hundred years of agricultural research in Canterbury - the pivotal developments

Abstract

The first research in Canterbury on agricultural problemsseems to have been reported by R. W. Fereday, a former president of the Philosophical Institute, who in the 1860s was the authority in Christchurch on insect pests. The editorial columns of the two newspapers were frequently devoted to discussion on similar problems; thus from the weekly Press ( 1866), " . . . the occurrence in nearly every garden we enter of Aphis lanigera (the woolly a phis) on apples; also the cabbage blight in all brassicas and which makes the field cultivation of turnips almost out of the question. During the last few years we have been visited with an army of caterpillars eating up whole fields in their course, whether of oats, wheat, barley, peas ... it behoves all those whose daily occupations bring them into contact with these pests to make experiments as to the best mode of keeping down their ravages, and at the same time giving knowledge thus acquired freely for the benefit of their fellow men ... ". At the outset, then, we can pay tribute to the Christchurch Press for its great service over 100 years in the promulgation of agricultural knowledge, exemplified now in its weekly agricultural supplement which has no peer in New Zealand newspaper journalism.