NO AGGREGATION.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 282, 27 November 1919, Page 15

NO AGGREGATION.

DENMARK'S REMARKABLE POSITION. VISITOR'S CONTRAST WITH NEW ZEALAND. (By Telegraph.—Special to ••Star.") WELLINGTON, this day. While the New Zealand political arena resounds with discussion of land aggrerration and drift to the towns, a Danish visitor, Mr. R. Knapp. official agricultural adviser to the Danish Government, who is investigating our dairying metthods. gives important facts showing how close settlement has benefited his country. Denmark appears to be exempt from the disquieting phenomenon of drift to tine town. It is a land of small holdinys and freeholders, and the country is thickly populated. In consequence interest in rural life is fostered by over a hundred agricultural schools and colleges and there are seventy high schools furnishing good general education. Then there are seventeen experimental stations, and over all, the Royal Agricultural College. Aggregation -and reaggretration do not exist, the tendency being rather the other way, as farms are divided up among the family of a fanner. On twenty acres a man may make a 2ood living. There are thousands of families who manage on less than ten acres. Land too poor for agriculture is being planted with trees to provide timber at a later date, and a progressive policy pervades the system of agriculture. Everything is tried to increase output, which in normal times from an area one-sixth the size of New Zealand, with three times its population, includes exports of butter worth £10.000.000, and of hacon three-quarters that value. WHERE SMALL HOLDINGS PAY. Denmark was described by Mr. Knapp as essentially a land of small holdings on the freehold system. Speaking from memory, he said tlhere were roughly, about 150,000 small holdings, ranging in area from one to ten acres; of farms of larger size, from ten to fifty acres area. He believed there were about 100,000 practically all engaged in dairying. Prices of land before the war had averaged, for good quality soil, about £50 an acre, but during and after the war values had risen considerably to nearer £100 an acre. Special holdings went up to as much as £125, but it must be remembered that this included complete farm buildings and equipment. From what he had heard, prices of land were nearly as high her, and 'the only way of making such farms pay was a more intensive system of culture. In Denmark there was no break in the round of dairying, no off season, with the closing of factories, such as Characterised our methods here. Supply went on in Denmark in winter as well as summer. This, of course, accounted for the necessity of artificial feeding. In years past the tendency of emigration from Denmark has been towards America, but Mr. Knapp. after touring Australia, is of opinion that this Dominion offers a better field. On his refurn to Denmark he is prepared to make representations to that effect, and the success of the early Danish settlers in Manawatu and the Seventy-mile Bush and elsewhere no doubt will be quoted in his report.