Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, MAY 22, 1931. SCIENCE AND FARMING.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 51, Issue 187, 22 May 1931, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. FRIDAY, MAY 22, 1931. SCIENCE AND FARMING.

The people of New Zealand will appreciate the feelings that prompted Lord Bledisloe to confess that the ceremony of opening the new science block at the Massey Agricultural College recently, gave him more entire satisfaction than any of the many other functions he has been called upon to perform as Governor-General. In his speech he emphasised the value of employing science as the chief instrument for the realisation of the objective of making the best possible use of land, affirming that no industry is so dependent as agriculture upon science for its success, and, he was constrained to add. from none has science received such small acknowledgment. His Excellency was as emphatic in his statement that "for a country competing with its land products in the open markets of the world with those of other countries conversant with and practising the latest teachings of science to turn a blind eye to the lessons of the scientists is to commit economic suicide. Even the most impoverished countries of the world have found public expenditure upon scientific research and the scientific guidance of their farming population to be a sound and remunerative national investment. Agricultural research has in recent times disclosed the most valuable results when put into practice. The successful farmer is the man who sets out to work his land or raise his stock on lines demonstrated as sound by the researches of the scientific experts in the various branches of the industry. Labour alone will not make the farm a payable proposition; the labour must be directed into the right channels through knowledge. Thus it ;s that the teaching of the basis of agricultural science at the Secondary Schools of the Dominion should be extended. In these days, when the farmer is prone to complain, with cause, that the industry is not on the level it should be. the need for sound initial training should be even more apparent than when farmers were more prosperous. It is sometimes urged as an argument against the study of the scientific side of the industry that the results do not show any advantage; in that case the lack must be looked for not in the system but in the manner in which the principles it has propounded are applied.