NEW FIELD OFFICER

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28921, 15 June 1959, Page 3

NEW FIELD OFFICER

Adviser To Farm Club

Mr P. M. Falconer, who holds both the diploma of agriculture and the diploma of valuation and farm management at Canterbury Agricultural College, has joined the staff of the college as a field officer in the farm management and rural valuation department. Most of his time will be spent as field officer to the Lauriston Farm Improvement Club in MidCanterbury, which is still the only club of its kind in the South Island.

Mr Falconer has taken the place of Mr R. A. Knox as adviser to club members. Mr Knox left Lincoln early this year to take up a similar post in Western Australia.

Born in Dunedin and educated at Otago Boys’ High School, Mr Falconer as a schoolboy, spent evenings and week-ends working on a town supply dairy farm on the outskirts of Dunedin. After leaving school he worked for two

years on a farm in the Maniototo, in Central Otago,, before studying at Lincoln. There he gained his diploma of agriculture in, 1953 and his diploma of valuation and farm management in 1954. At the college he shares with Mr Knox the distinction of winning the gold medals for the highest aggregate marks earned in both courses. Mr Falconer was the first to attain this honour.

Subsequently he spent two periods on properties in Central Otago, was shepherding on a station carrying 10,000 sheep at Waipori, and before he joined the staff at Lincoln he was, for two •years, managing a 4000-acre farm at Blenheim carrying 7000 sheep and 500 cattle.

The Lauriston Farm Improvement Club, which has been operating for about three years, has at present 20 members who are concentrated mainly in the MitchamSherwood and the north Winchmore areas, but there is a distance of about 35 miles between members in the Methven and Dorie districts.