Soil Conservation Post

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31345, 15 April 1967, Page 9

Soil Conservation Post

Mr N. C. Holmes, who has been a soil conservator in Christchurch, will take up the position of district soil conservator at Dunedin on Monday.

Aged 43, Mr Holmes was born in Christchurch and educated at St Andrew’s College and Lincoln College where he completed the diploma of agriculture in 1948 and then continued on for a year to do a course in soil conservation under former Associate Professor L. W. McCaskill. In 1951 Mr Holmes was appointed soil conservator in Invercargill and came to

Christchurch as a soil conservator in 1954. While tn Christchurch he has been with the Department of Agriculture and more recently with ffie new water and soil division of the Ministry of Works.

In Southland he was engaged in pioneer work on the Mid Dome soil conservation reserve and he was associated with Mr D. J. Hickey on the Glenmark catchment control scheme in North Canterbury. His main duties while stationed in Christchurch have been to service the North Canterbury and South Canterbury Catchment Boards and also to carry out soil conservation extension work outside catchment authorities.

Mr Holmes said this week that any work that he had done in gully control and farm planning which resulted in erosion being controlled or prevented had naturally been most rewarding and satisfying.

In Dunedin he will succeed Mr G. G. Calder, who is rearing. His district will cover Otago and Southland and include three catchment authorities.

Mr Holmes has been secretary of the Canterbury section of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Science for the last year and he served on the executive for a year before that He is a foundation member of the Association of Soil Conservators and has served on the executive of the association for eight years.