DEVELOPMENT OF LAND

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25784, 21 April 1949, Page 6

DEVELOPMENT OF LAND

SHORTAGE OF WIRE AND MANURE

“ WHOLESALE POLICY RIDICULOUS ”

“It would be ridiculous to establish a policy of wholesale development of land until we have more manure and more wire,” said the Minister of Agriculture (Mr E. L. Cullen) at Darfield last evening, in a review of the Government’s farming policy. Some persons had been critical of the Government for not settling returned men quickly enough, Mr Cullen said, but he personally cared little about how lohg a man had to wait for his farm if, when he did get it, it was a property which would be good enough to enabla him to bring up a family in a lifetime. It was easy to talk about spectacular land settlement schemes, but a good land policy was not based on spectacular purchases. “We have scoured every country in the world for wire,” said Mr Cullen, explaining how shortages held.up subdivision plans. “There has been an improvement in the position, but there is not the quantity yet for wholesale development.

“Some people say that we should develop the poorer classes of land. The position is that we are importing now 400,000 tons of phosphate, rock a year, and that is the total amount that the New Zealand superphosphate plants can handle. Even<at that there is not sufficient to give every farmer enough for his needs.” With this shortage of superphosphate, how could a policy of improving poorer land be undertaken on a big scale at present? ' Mr Cullen claimed that the big sums which had been built up in the stabilisation funds of the dairy and meat industries placed both of them in a more favourable position than similar industries in any other part of the Empire. It was absurd to suggest that the Government had loaded the Dairy Products Marketing Commission with its own supporters. He thought that on a vote the possible Labour supporters would be outvoted on the commission, but politics did not come into it.

Most of the questions after the address were concerned with wheat. Mr Cullen told one farmer who sought to know why more wheat was not grown in the North Island that farmers there, who could not produce anything like the quality of wheat grown in the South Island, found that producing fat lambs was a much better economic proposition for them. It was an individual decision of each farmer whether he should grow wheat or fatten lambs.

Discussing importations of fowl wheat from Australia, Mr Cullen said that as Minister of Marketing he would like to see the importation of eggs done away with. If more fowl wheat could be imported to build up fowl flocks, he would be in favour of it.