THE SMALL FARM SCHEME.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20909, 17 July 1933, Page 8

THE SMALL FARM SCHEME.

GOVERNMENT'S POLICY. LINKING UNEMPLOYED WITH THE LAND. "The Government means business —only the lack of sufficient suitable land will check the full development of the small farm scheme for the relief of unemployment;' Mr O. N, Campbell, commissioner to the Small Farms Board, told a representative of "The Press" yesterday. Mr Campbell is visiting Christchurch to confer with interested parties, to investigate the details of the scheme in Canterbury, and to further it in every possible way. Mr Campbell said that the Small Farms Board was anxious to hear any proposition which would show a way"" of linking the unemployed with the land. The board aimed to do this by any means that could be suggested and which would bear investigation, although it would not consider a scheme that was likely to bs a blind-alley for the men taking it up.

With the labour that the Unemployment Board had -available Mr Campbell considered that it should be possible to develop large areas of land inio a condition fit for settlement. The board planned to do this or else to put the men straight on to the land and then finance them while they developed it. Progress in the North. The scheme was farther advanced in the North Island than in the south, said Mr Campbell, because on the whole the holdings in the north were larger, and there was therefore more surplus land available. There were many land owners in these times who were only too glad to have a portion of their holdings taken off their hands, and were therefore willing to lease areas to the board. Thus everyone, the owners, the mortgagees, the unemployed men, and the country as a whole, benefited from the scheme.

"We feel." said Mr Campbell, "that small holdings intensively farmed are the solution of the present difficulties." With that end in view the board was putting the men on the smallest possible areas that would give a living, in some cases with the addition of a little general work in the neighbourhood. No Delay in Settlement. Mr Campbell stated definitely that as soon as land became available there would be no delay in settling men on to it. If it required development a camp would probably be established in which the men could live until the land had been brought into production, or men would be put on to it immediately and financed by the board until the land had begun to produce. In Canterbury so far the scheme was not properly under way, but as soon as land had been acquired the work of settling the men would begin.

Mr Campbell will spend two or three days in Christchurch discussing the details of the scheme with the local district committee which is administering it in Canterbury, and will then go on to Dunedin and Invercargill for the same purpose.