The Press THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1949. Sheep Research Station

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25784, 21 April 1949, Page 4

The Press THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 1949. Sheep Research Station

The deputation from the Ashburton ■ Agricultural and Pastoral Association and the Mid-Canterbury branch of Federated Farmers, which interviewed the Minister of Agriculture, Mr E. L. Cullen, yes- I terday, very earnestly and abbpresented the case for a South Island sheep research station in the district. There ought to be such i a station; it ought to find much of its work in the district, both as the traditional practise gives scope for it and as the advance of irrigation farming raises new questions. But the deputation asked for the wrong thing in asking the Minister to establish the new station in MidCanterbury. In consequence, it was' forced into -two .other errors, to which, it may be suspected (and hoped), some members of the deputation did not very happily commit themselves and into which many members of the bodies and the community they spoke for will refuse to follow them. The first was the error of urging the Minister to set up this station within the Department of Agriculture and under the control of officers of its livestock division. This is, of course, an ingratiating request to a member of a Government which loves to widen the establishments of the State and to the Minister in charge of a department which is at least as fond of widening its own as any of the ambitious family. But it is odd to find the representatives of farmers thrusting hard for departmentalism; or it would be odd, if it were not so plain that their case needed this thrust to have any sort of chance at all. The second error is connected with the first. It was impossible to ask for a station established in Mid-Canterbury under departmental control without at least trying to suggest a reason for not proposing to establish it within Lincoln College. The attempt was made. Lincoln College, if it undertook this work, would have “more than it could handle”; and, what is more, it could not combine “ diseases in sheep ” —as found- in all breeds, in all conditions of land and climate—with the Ashley Dene experiments on light land improvement. These reasons will not stand up for a moment. Lincoln College, first, can be equipped and staffed to handle all the animal research problems known or yet to be encountered in the South Island. It can be and should be. As a teaching centre it should develop its research functions fully; research nourishes teaching as nothing else does; and if sheep researches are not specially appropriate researches for Lincoln College, what, are? Lincoln’s research programme has been underdeveloped too long. It is lamentable to hear farmers proposing to keep it underdeveloped. Second, whoever suggested limiting a Lincoln College sheep research establishment to the scope it would have at Ashley Dene suggested something fantastic—if anybody ever did. Wherever a South Island sheep research station is established —and it is a South Island station that is in question— the South Island will be its field. % It must have a base; it will not heive, and cannot have, a research area confined to a single farm, a single local area, even so large a single local" area as Mid-Canterbury or all Canterbury, North, Mid. and South. The case to be made out for a South Island station is the case for a station organised to serve the Marlborough, the Nelson, and the Southland sheepfarmers evenly with those of Canterbury, Otago, and Westland; and it is certainly the case for a station organised within Lincoln College. The march to departmentalise research has already gone too far. This is the time, and this is the occasion, to stop it.