URUGUAYAN FARMER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30179, 10 July 1963, Page 17

URUGUAYAN FARMER

Brief Visit To Canterbury

A Uruguayan farmer, Mr A. Symonds, and his wife have been visiting Canterbury this week during a world tour.

Mr Symonds’s forbears went to Uruguay from Scotland and England 120 to 130 years ago. His great grandfather was a pioneer Hereford breeder in Uruguay, and today Mr Symonds is still breeding Hereford®—he runs polled Herefords. The Uruguayan town of Young is named after Mr Symonds's greatgrandfather, and it is in this region that Mr Symonds is farming. Mr Symonds said that his holdings totalled about 27,400 acres of very good land, which was now carrying 14,000 sheep and 6300 cattle. As well he was growing 3000 acres of wheat, linseed, and maize. His equipment included five tractors and three header harvesters. Two sons, one an accountant and the other a veterinarian, are .in the farming business with him, and a younger son is studying agronomy.

Corriedale sheep are run on the Symonds properties, and since 1934 Mr Symonds has been importing rams of the breed from New Zealand. This week he visited Corriedale studs in Canterbury, but he said yesterday that he was travelling for pleasure and had no intention of buying sheep. When a group from his country visited New Zealand later he might be interested in buying through it.

Mr Symonds said that what he had seen of New Zealand Corriedales and New Zealand fanpers had given him a very favourable impression. He had been impressed by the way farmers in this country bad to work themselves. Under toe system of farming in Uruguay farmers had many employees: he had 50 employees on his properties and still more when shearing and threshing were being done and his wife bad her maids.