HIS EXCELLENCY’S SPEECH

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26266, 10 November 1950, Page 9

HIS EXCELLENCY’S SPEECH

The Governor-General and Lady Freyberg spent an hour looking around the show grounds before the official opening ceremony, and later their Excellencies made a comprehensive tour of the grounds.

Declaring the show open. Sir Bernard Freyberg said that in spite of its late start Canterbury was bv 1880 the premier agricultural and pastoral province of New Zealand, and it had maintained that position for many years and sent many experienced farmers to the North Island and other parts of New Zealand. Tire province produced most of the cereals for New Zealand and its high quality grass seeds were the basis for New Zealand grassland farming. Although a comparatively voung body, the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand had given a lead to district and provincial associations and had developed a wider appreciation of the importance of the agricultural show, said his Excellency. The quality of the stock exhibited testified quite clearly that one of the principal objects of the society—the stimulating of good livestock breeding --had been achieved.

Sir Bernard Freyberg paid a tribute to the work of Canterbury Agricul-

tural College and praised ,its exhibit at the show. The college, he said, had won wortd-wide admiration bv its achievements, and everyone owed the college a debt of gratitude for the work it had done in helping to rehabilitate former servicemen. Mr B. E. Keiller, president of the Royal Agricultural Society, after congratulating Canterbury on reaching its centennial, said that the society carried on the system worked in England where shows were held in different counties each year. In New Zealand there was a great handicap because the country was divided into two islands and the difficulties of transport made it almost impossible to stage a fully representative Dominion show, but the society had carried on with peripatetic shows, the next of which would be staged in Auckland.

He reminded farmers and other exhibitors that agricultural shows were the “farmers’ shop window,” and a worthwhile contribution towards improving the stock of the Dominion. Whil’e there were still many starving people in the world, New Zealand must not relax its efforts to produce as much food as it possibly could, Mr Keiller concluded. •