Move To Increase Food And Timber Production

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 14928, 16 March 1949, Page 5

Move To Increase Food And Timber Production

Villages Being Created In British Wastelands

Afforestation May Solve Re-settling Problem

Britain is not growing enough food or timber for her population, and major steps are being taken to lernedy these deficiencies. Mr L. h. Easterbrook spoke recently in the 8.8.C. ; s Pacific Service about the new villages that are being created in the waste lands of the EnglishScottish border in order to increase food and timber production. He said that, contrary to the ideas of many people abroad, Britain is not made up mostly of industrial towns interspersed with parks, but that eighty per cent of it is agricultural land, a lot of it lonely hills that are sadly under-populated and where farmers have to live in almost complete isolation. He remarked that most people nowadays will noi put up with such a life, for they want neighbours, schools for thenchildren, a few shops and perhaps a cinema. With the new scheme of afforestation now in hand it seems that the answer to the problem of re-settlmg land in isolated districts has been found, for on the acres that were formerly bare ground new forests will be planted. Timber-growing country eventually employs about one man to every 20 acres of woodland, sawmills are needed and many other things too, making a nucleus for a rural community. He described the first Of these new communities, at a place called Ae in Dumfries: "When I first saw it three years ago it was a bare hillside, right out among the hills with the beginnings of the new Forest of Ae just showing up, about three feet high. It is a lovely spot, with a little stream, called the Water of An, running by in the valley. Now the first four of the houses are half finished. There will be 26 by the end of the year, and at least 80 in the end. A church will be built to crown a rising bit of ground where sheep are now grazing. There will be ah inn, a school, a village shop that sells everything from new suits and ironmongery to stamps and bootlaces, and a vilage hall where the future inhabitants can meet for entertainment. ' ' Everything will be here for a selfcontained community to make its own life and develop its own ways of expressing itself. There will be a plaving field for village sportsmen and the children, and swimming in the stream that may be just bif* enough for boating too. There will be .transport, of n modest kind, to the nearest town that is 12 miles away for more elaborate shopping expeditions and visits to the cinema." There will be many problems to solve of course, there always are, but as Mr Easterbrook concluded by saying, "We've made a start and we think we see the way ahead."