AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 204, 30 August 1933, Page 10

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

I notice that Mr. Park, the cultured I principal of the Seddon Technical College, says his agricultural class is capitally equipped and instructed, and that Mr. N. R. W. Thomas, the popular chairman of tho New Zealand (Auckland) Institute of Horticulture, says with equal conviction that it needs a great amount of modernising and (shall I say?) gingering. I think both are wrong. The agricultural course could be begun, pursued, and ended with a placard tacked outside the entrance door, sayins:. in large letters: "For goodness sake, keep your minds off the land." The reasons for this advice are very serious. There were, just before the Prime Minister departed for London, over 12,000 applicants fo- under the Government's small farms plan. Some of these have been waitii.? for IS months past, and I question whothcr to-day the settlement is proceeding as fast as new applications are barnacling on to the list. It is undeniably wrong, even cruel, to teach young people to love agriculture as a calling while the gateway into its practical enjoyment is hopelessly cemented shut. These 12,000 waiting applicants are losing; income and advancement at an average of at least £1 ' per week per family —say half a million pounds per annum—and costing the relief 1 funds perhaps a further half-million. Be- ' fore Messrs. Park and Thomas should 1 go full speed ahead, therefore, it is necessary to stop this million-a-year stagna- 1 tion. Its causes are somewhat ob«cure, i but a principal one is that the plan is i apparently inadequately staffed. There is damaging delay in inspecting properties offered, delay again in considering their acquisition (sometimes 10 weeks to ' this stage), delay through rejecting them, delay in passing applications for them, and delay in securing offers of additional properties. All this, while £12,000 ai

I per week is being wasted. My object in presenting this viewpoint into the educational controversy is to suggest to Mr. Thomas, at least, and perhaps also to Mr. Park, that they should offer the services of experienced gentlemen within their call to inspect properties on offer at short notice to eliminate the delays caused by the inspection committees of the Small Farms Division being unavailable when required. This could be done I without complications. The committees have just two questions to answer: Is the land suitable for the purpose proIposed? Is the price reasonable? The I Institute of Horticulture might help to remove the anomaly of a dairy farmer being to report on a horticultural proposition. I trust that out of this correspondence the institute will offer the Government the services of gentlemen of leisure willing to speed up the small farms plan. ARTHUR SAINSBURY, (Dominion President N.Z. Small Farms League, Otahuhu.)