Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, MAY 10, 1917. FARMERS AND THE BALLOT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4054, 10 May 1917, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, MAY 10, 1917. FARMERS AND THE BALLOT.

About 300 farmers, farm labourers, and shearers have been withdrawn from the Ashburton County since the war began, and of the 140 men whose names appear in the Seventh Ballot, published yesterday, no less than 80 are men at present actively engaged in farm work of some description. If any argument were needed to reveal the absurdity and unfairness of this system of recruiting,-these facts ought to supply it. Cabinet Ministers and ,the members of the Efficiency Board have been, and still are, constantly the farmers to produce, more, and still more, foodstuffs, .yet they permit the continuance of a system that makes it absolutely impossible for farm work to be carried on. It may happen, of course, that a proportion of the 80 men will fail to pass the medical test, but that does not affect the fact that the principle is inequitable and in opposition to the vital interests of the Dominion. There is also the prospect of some of the men being exempted by the Appeal Board, but the hearing of appeals involves a waste of valuable time at a period when every hour's work is urgently required. We would direct the attention of the authorities to the excellent speech delivered on February 20 by Mr Prothero, President of the British Board of Agriculture, at a meeting of the Central and Associated Chambers of Agriculture. Mr Prothero dealt specially with the problem of the depletion of labour for farms, in its relation to the sudden need for a vastly increased acreage being planted in foodstuffs. He said that what would really strengthen him was this — if he had the power which the Minister of Munitions had to say, "Such and such a man is indispensable," he would be able to prevent the taking away of men whom he knew—and they knew— to be indispensable for particular farms.. It was all very well to offer various forms of substitutes, but they knew perfectly well that they could not find a substitute for a man who was accustomed to work o* one farm and with, one farmer, and who knew the land and its master from top to bottom. It was oiit of the question. Therefore, while it was right and proper they Should get all the assistance they possibly could, no substitutes. would make up for the men who were being taken away. Yet they would get a lot of men, untrained probably most of them, and they had to make the best of it. Just as Lord Kitchener had to make the best of the very unpromising looking material out of which he had made one of the finest armies the world had ever seen, now each individual farmer had got to be, so to speak, the Kitchener of the new agricultural army. The taskwas not impossible provided.their non-commissioned officers were left—their ploughmen. When people talked about growing a crop of wheat —and many people talked a great deal who had never tried it —they did not know the skilled labour that was required to grow it. He supposed a skilled labourer went over every piece of land on which wheat was grown at least eight times in the course of a season. Did their friends realise that, or did they j think farmers simply scratched a furrow in the land, put in the wheat, and went away ? The position in "New Zealand is exactly similar to that at Home, with this exception: that thousands of skilled labourers who are

on active service can be, and to some extent are being, released at a day's notice for work on the farms in Great Britain; whereas in New Zealand the farmers and their assistants are being withdrawn at a rate that will render efficient cultivation for the coming season's crops practically impossible. If succeeding ballots continue to comb out over 50 per cent, of farmers, the . Appeal Board will have to grant wholesale exemptions, or thousands of acres of land will have to remain uncultivated.