TEACHING THE FARMER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 155, 4 July 1938, Page 8

TEACHING THE FARMER.

Few of the thousands of appointment? tor the State service made during the past three years are half as well justified as the increa.se to the dairy farm instruction staff announced by the Prime Minister on Saturday. There was a great outcry from the farming community when the first appointments to this staff were made by the Seddon Government at the end of last century, but the value of their work has been increasingly recognised, and their practical advice has helped the farmer to increase both the quality and volume of his output. In a primary producing country such as this, where butterfat is the lubricant of the wheels of prosperity, and where the output is in competition with the best that the whole world can produce, nothing must be left undone to achieve and maintain the highest level of quality. New methods, wherever evolved, must be examined and applied when found to suit our conditions. An educated staff of practical instructors assists in the full use of Departmental investigation, and by its advice and instruction ensures that uniformity of product which is so essential to the jcultivation of a stable market. The farmer of a past generation was notoriously a difficult man to teach, but nowadays he is much more responsive to the advice of the scientist, and with practical assistance still further extended New Zealand butter should hold, or increase, i its place in the world's market.