'BACK TO THE LAND.'

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 302, 21 December 1932, Page 11

'BACK TO THE LAND.'

ENGLISH MOVEMENT. SUCQESS OF SMALL FARMS. CONTINENTAL EXAMPLES. The movement to encourage boys leaving sqhool to take up a farming career is not singular to New Zealand. There is a similar movement in England, headed by the Society of Friends, among whom are some of tile most influential men in the country. There are.various other organisations active in supporting the scheme, prominent among which is the Eural Reconstruction Aeeociation, which has .its headquarters in Belgrave Koad, London, S.W. This body, among others, i 3 giving the plan all the publicity possible and educating the public to the .absolute necessity of getting people back to the land. In giving this information, Mr. John Cliff, of Kent, who is in New Zealand on holiday, said that Mr. Montagu Fordham, F.R.Eeon.S., a well-known authority, had stated some time ago that the under-development of agriculture throughout England was responsible for half of the unemployment there, and meant a loss in national wealth of £250,000,000 annually. Mr. Clift observed that agriculture in this country could be much more concentrated, and from his conclusions, drawn from visits in many part oi the world, was of the opinion that small-ncreage farming was the most successful and best. In the Balearic Isles, in the Mediterranean, particularly Majorca, in France and Germany, and many other countries of Europe email farms were the method of agriculture. In India about 80 per cent of the farming community lived on the fruits of products of small areas. France was a peasant nation; Germany's email farmers were those who were feeling the "pinch" least in their own country; while in the Balearic Isles small-area farming had been the custom for generations. The people lived frugally, but had always sufficient to eat. The land was, in fact, so intensely cultivated that the very sides of the hills were'terraced, in some cases the terraces being not more than a couple of yards wide, but of considerable length. Mr. Clift said that there were also many small-acreage farms in Quebec, Canada, where there were large families living comfortably on the small holdings.

"Only recently," said Mr. Clift, "Sir Charlee Fielding, a recognised authority on agriculture and director of food production during the war years, stated that England could be self-supporting if ehe would but develop more intensively her agricultural resources. Tho farms in England aro mostly fairly large, although they vary in size in different counties, owing to the fact that xmtil only recently tho farming lands were mostly the property of wealthy squires." Hβ eaid that taxation was now altering conditions and some of the farms were being subdivided. He wae of the opinion that there were parte of England where more wheat to tho acre could be produced than in most other countries of the world.