DEVELOPMENT OF MARGINAL LAND

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27132, 31 August 1953, Page 5

DEVELOPMENT OF MARGINAL LAND

SUSPENSORY LOANS ADVOCATED (From Our Own Reporter) GREYMOUTH, August 30. West Coast farmers are opposed to the view of the Minister of Lands (Mr E. B. Corbett) that the Marginal Lands Act is the answer to farm lands development throughout their province. The opinion expressed at a meeting of the West Coast Federated Farmers recently was that it would be necessary to have some type of suspensory loan scheme to make it economic to break in second-class land in the province. Arguments adduced at the meeting were referred to the lands committee with the suggestion of later discussions with the Westland District Progress League. There were problems in Westland which did not apply to other parts of the Dominion, it was stated by Mr M. Wallace, who claimed that the Marginal Lands Act as at present written did not meet the problem of developing idle lands on the West Coast. One suggestion was that a Marginal Lands Board representative should be included on each of the federation’s executives and provisions of the act should be made more fully known. Mr Wallace asked what the Minister had done in establishing servicemen on some of the best land in the province. In every case, he said, there had been a suspensory loan system and the rehabilitated man had been given to understand that in due course, provided he stayed on the land, the difference between the cost of production and the capital outlay would be i written off. If that was done with I first-class land, how much more should it be done in the case of second and third-class land? he asked.