ADVISER TO FARMERS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29330, 8 October 1960, Page 14

ADVISER TO FARMERS

Australian Post For NX Man

A Christchurch man. Mr P. L. McSkimming, has been appointed adviser to a new farm improvement club in Western Australia. The club, known as the Murray Advisory Service, is the second to be formed in Western Australia. The adviser of the first club to be formed in the State was Mr R. A. Knox, who was first adviser to the Lauriston Farm Improvement Club in Mid-Canterbury. Mr McSkimming, who comes originally from Otago, was educated at John McGlashan College, Dunedin, and Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, where he gained a diploma in agriculture and a diploma in rural valuation and farm management. For almost five years he has been with the economic service of the New Zealand Meat and Wool Boards as a field officer engaged in survey work on mixed cropping and fat lamb farms. Most of this time with the economic Service has been spent in the South Island.

Mr McSkimming expects to complete his work with the economic service at the end of the year and leave for Western Australia in January. Over the Christmas and New Year holidays he will be leader of a team of Scripture Union, Children’s Special Service Mission and Crusader Movement workers conducting a mission at Carters Beach, near Westport. The area in which the New Zealander will be working in Western Australia lies south of Perth and measures about 30 or 40 miles long and is 10 miles wide.

It has a Mediterranean climate, with a 36in rainfall. He is likely to have to provide an advisory service for about -50 farmers, some of whom run sheep and beef cattle, some dairy cattle and others who are engaged in both types of farming. Before taking up his advisory post Mr McSkimming will have an opportunity to spend three months at the University Institute of Agriculture at Perth.