"A NEW WORLD"

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21402, 19 February 1935, Page 11

"A NEW WORLD"

Economist On Need For New Methods POSITION OF THE FARMING INDUSTRY [THE PRESS Special Service.] WELLINGTON, February 18. "There is a tendency in Australia, as elsewhere, to imagine that full recovery from the depression will result automatically from the application of noutine methods which have proved satisfactory in the past," said Dr. A. G. B. Fisher, professor of economics at the University of Otago, who arrived from Sydney by the Makiira to-day. During the last 12 months, Dr. Fisher has held the position of economic adviser to the Bank of New South Wales, at its head office in Sydney. "It is certainly undesirable," said Dr. Fisher, "to adopt innovations merely because the ideas expressed in them are new; but it is not yet sufficiently realised that the world of to-day is a new world, and that proper control of the forces which are now operating demand original intellectual efforts on the part of both political and business leaders." Australia's problems, said Dr. Fisher, were in many important respects very similar to those of New Zealand, although the relative importance of the different markets naturally varied in the two places. Broadly speaking, it could be said that to some extent Australia was suffering, as New Zealand was, from the evil effects of the prevalent error of a few years ago, that indefinite extension of farming activity was possible without damaging market prospects. In wheat farming, for instance, interests which had grown up as a result of the attempt to settle new farmers in recent years made it very difficult to adjust the position without imposing serious hardships on some innocent individuals, either as debtors or creditors. Australia, like New Zealand, had made important advances in the application of efficient scientific methods of farming work; "but it was not being sufficiently realised that this important step made a rapid extension of farming unwise, said Dr. Fisher. One of the most vital problems in the immediate future was how to reverse that trend without upsetting unduly large sections of the population who had been induced to believe that their welfare depended directly on the maintenance of farming on its present scale.