Increased Production

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23089, 3 August 1940, Page 12

Increased Production

meeting in Christchurch this week steps wereitaken toput the .organisation of increased prqduction on a district basis, North Canterbury .divided into small areas, in each of which of two or three practical and sucfarmers will lead the effort to extend tee r crop acreage in accordance with the programme laid down. The movement should have this stage long ago. Even if tfae'cropping, dairying, and meat production programme could not have been as definitely shaped in the late, summer or the autumn as ft can fae now, preparation could have been forand in some respects completed. The campaign for which the Primary Production Council was responsible was for months generalised,? almost wholly,; in , the form of mass Sheetings, exhortations, and advice without ||elp.'■ Now that it is about to reach the local iffeas and local knowledge and leadership are to the problems of crop distribulabour, and use of machinery, of the work of organisation-will have iolbe done in a hurry, and for some of it the is already far too late. North Canterexample,- is called on to sow 2800 IlcresVof ■wheat u in addition to what is already ■will be a risky business, at iring ,wheat sowings on the ter'suitable land, where later the diahces of a crop, is • not 4sfs/in,--h’ specific form the -the programme was represented ■ &^nstCounca,vsaid 1 that, bei acreage of wheat, North

Canterbury was required to put in 1200 acres more of oats for threshing, 1500 acres of barley, and 2500 acres of field peas, with increased acreages, also, qf pasture seed crops and forage crops. Since he explained that “specific allot- “ ments had been set for the various districts,” it appears that total requirements have been parcelled out on the basis of statistical returns available, each district being left to solve the problems thus presented. They might have been easier to solve and more thoroughly solved, if they had been approached through district surveys, the results of which could have been correlated and so adjusted to over-all demands. But, obviously, the better approach would have been the longer and slower one, for which there is now no time. The best that can be done with the allotments as made must be done, though it will be wise to allow the district committees, through the district council, reasonable freedom to correct them economically. The failures and follies of arbitrary methods of expanding farm production in Great Britain, during the last war, provide a warning against too much’rigidity. But the fact that the attempt is now at last being made to organise the energies and resources essential to the campaign, and to organise them where and as they can be most effective, ought to mean that they are to be trusted; and it is to be hoped that it does mean that. With the aid of the Government’s new scheme of advances, swiftly and intelligently administered, and with the swift and intelligent co-operation of the Department of Agriculture and the Primary Production Council. a good district committee will make rapid progress. But none will be able to work faster or better than officialdom will let it.