MAORI FARMERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 13, 16 January 1940, Page 5

MAORI FARMERS.

LAND DEVELOPMENT PLAN, i INDIVIDUAL HOLDINGS. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) ROTORUA, this day. The final process under the Maori land development schemes, that of unit farmers, is now increasingly in evidence in the Rotorua district. The system under which the schemes are worked provides for the large, scale development of suitable areas which are later cut up into individual holdings (of approximately eighty acres in the case of dairying) and taken over by unit farmers. By a process of repayment these holdings eventually become the property of those working them, although still under the of land development officers of the Native Department. The first of the unit farms in the Rotorua district were taken up on the Horohoro block in 1933, but to-day there are 4.3 units on various sections of this scheme. Nineteen of these are on the Ngatituara section of the block, seventeen on a portion being farmed by natives from the Wairoa district, five on the Tuhourangi section, three on the Parekaraangi block and one on the Peka block. In addition to these units there, are two on the Tihiotonga, twelve on Tiketere, and one on Okere, making a total in all of sixty units. On all these units farmers are now operating on their own and in the majority of cases are doing particularly well.