Early Mission Farms In N.Z. “Never Successful”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29616, 12 September 1961, Page 20

Early Mission Farms In N.Z. “Never Successful”

The trial* of the first European fanners in New Zealand, the missionaries of the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society fa Northland, were described by Mr R. P. Hargreaves, of the geography department of the university of Otago in an address to the New Zealand Geographical Association. Mr Hargreaves has been making a special study of the history of the missionaries* attempts at farming, a good deal of his material coming from diaries in the Hocken Library, Dunedin. "The inescapable conclusion is that mission farming before 1830 was never a success, for at no time was all the food needed by the mission stations provided from the farms,” Mr Hargreaves said. The farm at Waimate (North), started under Richard Davis about 1830, was much more successful, although still not altogether an economic proposition. One of the biggest difficulties met with by the mission farmers was that the land they had was usually of the poorest The first consideration was safety, so that it was necessary for them to live under the close protection of a friendly chief; this normally meant that their choice of land was severely restricted. Moreover, the Maoris were normally unwilling to pass good land over to the missionaries, and tended to offer

the plots which they had just worked out Before the arrival of the missionaries, a few white men had grown plots of various crops here and there, but no attempt had been made either at subsistence farming or at introducing European resources and methods to the Maoris, said Mr Hargreaves. The missionaries, under the guidance of Samuel Marsden, had both aims in view. Coming to New Zealand with the idea of making the conversion of the Maoris their life’s work, they saw in farming both- a way of assisting the Maoris and a necessity in establishing a permanent settlement. The Wesleyan missionaries, who arrived a few years later, had made no deliberate attempt to create a farm, partly because there were more supplies generally available by then but also, possibly, because they normally expected to put in only a spell of duty in these islands. When Samuel Marsden arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1814 to start the first mission station he brought with him 90 bushels of wheat and other seed and livestock which included horses, cattle, sheep, and poultry. By 1820, the pattern of farming had developed: grain, and particularly wheat, was the main crop, although a wide range of other plants was grown in the missionaries’ gardens. The missionaries and their Maori helpers worked in the fields every week-day from daybreak to 4 p.m., according to one visitor’s observations; in any case, a great deal of labour was certainly put into the work. The first Slough was put into New ealand soil at the Kerikeri station on May 3, 1820. Troubles Most of the ground was relatively infertile even to start with, and with the cropping by wheat the yields dropped steadily. Manure was not easy to come by, since the animals were few. Docks and other exotic weeds, however, were luxuriant even at this stage. The gardens and fields were many times invaded by stock, often the missionaries’ own beasts. Moreover, the climate was not really suitable for some of the European varieties of wheat and other grains. Caterpillars and blight took their toll. Sometimes the farming activities had repercussions in the theological sphere. At Kerikeri in 1825, half the wheat area had been manured and half not, with results which may be guessed. Hongi. one of the Maori leaders, observed to the missionary. James Kemp, that Kemp had told him that God made the wheat grow, but from the look of the mission paddocks it looked as if it had been the manure which did the real work. Kemp’s answer is not recorded. Meanwhile, the flocks and herds had been growing. Sheep were established by 1819, although not in large numbers, and Marsden’s herd of “choice black cattle’’ at Kerikeri was handed over to the missionary society in 1823. The main difficulty with the cattle was in rounding them up, as they were allowed to roam at large. In 1817 the Church Missionary Society appointed a special officer, Gordon, to supervise farming operations, but he did little. Then, in 1824, Davis arrived to take up this work. In spite of the apathy towards farming of Henry Williams, the new head of the mission, Davis succeeded in putting the operations on a much better basis. Although an attempt to start a farm on good land at Kawakawa had to be abandoned because of Maori threats, at Waimate there were much more satisfactory results.