The Press FRIDAY, MAY 18, 1945. Soil Conservation Districts

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24569, 18 May 1945, Page 4

The Press FRIDAY, MAY 18, 1945. Soil Conservation Districts

Outside the catchment areas, soil conservation districts may be constituted under the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Act; and regulations recently gazetted show that the method of administration to be followed in these districts is one of formidable severity. The immediate agency is the district committee, under the chairmanship of an officer appointed by the National Council, and formed in equal numbers of persons chosen by the council from nominees of the local authorities and of persons directly nominated by the council. When he thinks the occasion is “ urgent ”, the chairman may exercise the powers of the committee alone. Generally, it is to “ carry “ out such instructions as it may “ receive from the council ” —a sufficiently blunt imperative. It is also to report on the existence, progress, or likelihood of erosion in the district, on factors advancing or checking it, and on the need for and worth of remedial or preventive measures. So far, so good, though with three reservations. ' The first is that the licence to the chairman to act alone, when he thinks he should, is too widely drawn. Second, a committee which is instructed and bound to do what it is told is very likely to end up doing little else. Third, the value of the reports called for will vary with the competence of the committee; and high competence will be hard to ensure. Nevertheless, high competence is assumed in the regulations, which empower the committee to act with far-reaching effect. For example, the committee may require the occupier of land to do any or all of the following: Change the kind and class of stoqk on his land or otherwise change the use of his land. Restrict the numbers of each kind and class depastured. Leave land idle and unstocked. Plant trees, shrubs, grasses, etc., of any specified kind, as and where the committee directs. Take action against animal pests. Carry out “any specified works” or do ‘‘any specified things” the committee expects to be useful. Refrain from doing anything the committee thinks will be harmful. Make no change in the land use being practised at a given date. It is true that the regulations provide for appeals against these and other orders; but when the procedure laid down is too arbitrary, to provide for appeals is not enough. And the procedure is too arbitrary, most dangerously so if and when an incompetent committee becomes responsible for it; undesirably so, no matter how competent the committee may be. It should be considered, first, that the regulations nowhere suggest dr even mention an experimental approach to the problems of soil conservation. Yet this is, surely, as land use and farm management enter into them, the approach that promises the surest progress and the least risk. Second, co-operation with the farmers is not provided for. Committee members msy be f farmers, certainly; but to count- on that is to count on their having the.will and the wits to develop informally what ought to oe formally accepted as essential and systematically pursued. These regulations, like many others in New Zealand, are cast in a bureaucratic mould. They would be enormously improved if they were amended on the Tennessee Valley Authority model, which provides for community co-operation. The community decides, or helps to decide, what farms shall be experimental and what experiments—e.g., in cropping, stocking, permanent planting and grassing, and fertilising—shall be. carried out; and the farmers concerned enter into contract agreements with T.V.A. accordingly. These experiments have been successful in one way: they have raised output 30 per cent, without adding to labour or equipment costs. They have also succeeded in another; they have converted communities into active and willing partners in ths T.V.A. policy. There is no reason to, suppose that they will not work in New Zealand, except that bureaucrats have minds don’t work that way.