Bledisloe Medal Award

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31016, 23 March 1966, Page 20

Bledisloe Medal Award

Mr J. B. Brown, the Valuer-General, has been awarded the Bledisloe Medal for •1966 by the council of Lincoln College.

The medal, presented in 1930 by Viscount Bledisloe, is awarded annually to the former student who, as a result of his training at the college, has materially assisted farming in New Zealand or has otherwise advanced the country’s interests. Mr Brown, the son of an old student at the college, was educated at the Timaru Boys’ High School and returned to his father’s Mid-Canterbury farm for more practical experience before attending Lincoln College from 1925 to 1927. On the completion of the three-year course he gained a diploma in agriculture and was gold medallist of his year. He joined the Lands and Survey Department in Christchurch as a field officer in 1933. In 1936 he was appointed a farm appraiser for the State Advances Corporation and served at Ashburton. Timaru, and Tauranga before becoming district aporaiser for the Bay of Plenty-Rotorua area in 1943. In 1948 he became chief

field inspector in the Lands and Survey Department in Wellington, and in 1949 assistant fields director, responsible for land development throughout New Zealand. In 1957 he was appointed Fields Director and Director of Marginal Lands. He became Assistant Director-General of Lands in 1958, and ValuerGeneral in 1959. As Valuer-General he is chairman of the Valuers’ Registration Board and is a member of the Land Settlement Board, the National Provident Fund Board, the Board of Maori Affairs and the investment boards of the Public Trust Office and the Government Life Office.

In 1958 Mr Brown was a member of the consultative committee set up by the Government to inquire into and report on agricultural education in New Zealand and opportunities for young persons to take up farming. He was also a member of the committee of the New Zealand Society of Accountants which produced the research report on farm accounting in 1961.

Mr Brown is a past-presi-dent of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Science, and last year was chairman of the land valuation working party of the Agricultural Development Conference.