POST-WAR USE OF LAND

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23590, 18 March 1942, Page 6

POST-WAR USE OF LAND

NEED FOR PLANNING The need for comprehensive and well-founded planning for post-war land use and for a survey of land resources at the outset were emphasised by Mr K. B. Cumberland, lecturer in geography at Canterbury University College, in an address to the Rotary Club yesterday. Traversing New Zealand during and after a century of change—the laissezfaire use of land, soil, and other resources; the successful commercial development of these; the hand-to-mouth farm policy, and the one-sided economy —Mr Cumberland said that the two stars to which planning should be hitched we're victory with the emergence of an invigorated democracy, and the Atlantic Charter and official amplification of it. Mr Cordell Hull had expressed, among principles for a post-war order, the following:—That nationalism should not be allowed to mean excessive trade restrictions, that there should be no discrimination in international trade relations, and that raw materials should be accessible to all nations.

"A free world.” Mr Cumberland said, “in which the Atlantic and the Pacific become highways and not barriers, in which excess supplies are available to all without discrimination can use all that New Zealand’s diminishing soil resources can produce. The slim prospects for New Zealand butter and wool have perhaps been overdone. I feel that under such conditions as Cordell Hull envisages, when food and fibres will be put into the hands of people needing them, there will be little need to replace these with substitutes. Economic nationalism has artificially fostered expensive substitutes.

“Yet, even so, we must be prepared for changes—and new patterns of land use. In any event a diversification of our economy—especially of our primary production—is indicated. The changed conditions will come upon us suddenly even if we prepare to meet them now. New problems _ will be added to those now with us.”