Some thoughts after 20 years retirement

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33252, 15 June 1973, Page 14

Some thoughts after 20 years retirement

It is more than 20 years now si nee Professor E. R. Hudson gave up the directorship of Lincoln College. I le has been living since on the outskirts of Christchurch in Watsons Road. Harewood. on land that was once part of a dairy farm and intensive cropping property and which during \\ orld \\ ar II was used to produce vegetables for the troops. With his son he has been producing vegetables, fruit, flowers, bulbs and nursery plants.

Professor Hudson is now in his 80th year and last month he and his wife, the former Nan Skelton, celebrated the 50th anniversary of their wedding in Christchurch. They derived much pleasure from the fact that on the occcasion many old students of the college found time to call on them to wish them well. The other day, more than 20 years away from the day-to-day problems of agriculture and related ■ subjects. Professor Hudson agreed to look at these subjects again in the light of what has happened over the intervening years. There will be many who will not agree with what he has to say but his views are nonetheless thought provoking and worthy of close attention. The inflation in land values, both urban and rural, has been much in the news lately and it was the first subject that Professor Hudson raised. When he left the college and moved to Watsons Road he acquired two blocks of land—one of seven acres at £207 an acre and a smaller block of four acres for £204 an acre. Just recently a 10acre block across the road has been sold for 530.000. If he was to sell the land that he had bought some 20 years ago he said that if all was fair he should be but one of the recipients of the gain in value. The increase did not stem as much from anything that the owners had done as it did from the development of society and the whole economy — from the population growth and the expansion of the city and the growth of industry and commerce. Professor Hudson recalled that his thinking on this subject was not something that had developed recently, as in 1936 after he had taken up the directorship of Lincoln, Professor Belshaw at Victoria University had asked him to contribute an article on the future of farming to a pamphlet, along with a number of other people writing on similar subjects. He had then said that he felt farming in this country would be more soundly based, and it would generally be to its advantage. if land was nationalised rather than being in private ownership. He realised well the arguments that were inevitably raised against such a proposition. One of the greatest was that the leaseholder would care less for the land than the man who held a freehold title, but on the basis of the knowledge he had of the many instances where leasehold and freehold were being farmed

by the same man. where the land was of a comparable type he had never been able to detect that one area was being farmed better than the other. On the question of community of tenure. Professor Hudson said he saw no reason, where a man had farmed a property efficiently and paid his rents, he should not have a right of renewal and his son, if he wished, should also have some rights to carry on farming the property. He saw this system, with periodic reviews of rentals to keep pace with changes in values, making a contribution to economic stability. With the way that values and prices were going now the chances of a young man becoming a farmer on his own account seemed to be increasingly slim. Referring to the recent sale of a property on Banks Peninsula at more than $500,000, he said he would estimate that the price paid was several times its productive value. There seemed to be a group of people, he said, with a great deal of money for whom there was a great inducement to put their money into real estate and particularly land. They were making it more difficult for the legitimate farmer who was forced into greater debt through having to pay more for his land, or who was also encouraged to acquire land with one eye

on farming it and the other on making money out of its resale. While it would not be true in every case, Professor Hudson said he believed that generally every farm in New Zealand could do with another labour unit in the interests of the land itself and the nation as a whole. But today the big capital investment required in agriculture had largely replaced investment in manpower. There was a trend towards farming of larger areas of land, and he did not oppose this so long as management was efficient. The aim of maximum efficiency sometimes meant more machinery and less labour, but there was a point where a certain level of labour was indispensible. He felt that labour had to become a bigger item of farm expenditure. Professor Hudson said that there was much talk these days about full employment and that he viewed as being a desirable thing, but people seldom stopped to think about how people were employed—whether they were in useful. productive employment. He did not care whether a man was in a dance band, used a pick and shovel or was a slaughterman so long as he was doing a useful job and doing it in the best way—employment where a man gave of his best was something that was a matter of great satisfaction —but it was necessary to distinguish between what was a productive enterprise and where the objective was straight acquisition. The country might be better off if a certain percentage of people stayed at home and did nothing. In another sense, too. he believed that there may be a waste of energy and human resources, and that was in seeking the development of the overseas consumer and the search for markets. He thinks that

this may be overdone at the moment. Professor Hudson said that the world was becoming a smaller place all the time and New Zealand was getting closer to countries like Indonesia and China and this country’s fortunes in the future were likely to be very closely interwoven with such countries. While New Zealand was a country essentially suited to food production, he said that the prospects for a better life in- some of these other countries depended almost solely on the development of secondary industries, for they had neither the land nor climate for agricultural production, so that if they wanted to buy New Zealand’s agricultural produce this country had to be prepared to take their manufactured products in return. If New Zealand gave undue exphasis to developing secondary industries, as well as its agriculture, then it was in effect working to keep some of these developing countries down. Where countries had manufactured goods and were short of food, Professor Hudson said that they would turn to this country — they did not need to be subjected to high pressure salesmanship and they knew' the sort of products that they wanted. He said that he questioned the persuasive tactics that were sometimes used to promote sales. The Dairy Board was making a point of the fact that it was selling large quantities of dairy produce to Latin American countries, but New Zealand was lending the money for these purchases. This, he believed, was a reflection of the emergence of a world-wide trend in which the world was split into two groups both within and between nations —those who lived by toil to produce something to meet a human ‘need and those who invested money in the hope of living off interest and profits.

Professor Hudson said that the American, Robert McNamara, had said that the greatest difficulties at international meetings were financial and listed credit (or debt) as one of the stumbling blocks, and a few years ago a Scotsman, Lord McLeod, when visiting New Zealand had said that two of the greatest problems in the world were colour and credit. Professor Hudson is pessimistic on these matters and believes that they could lead to the break down of western civilisation. Full of praise for New Zealand farmers, Professor Hudson says he believes that there has been a steady improvement in the standard of farming over the last 20 years and in Canterbury he says that a matter of very great importance has been the general build up of fertility under improved pastures and intensive stocking and he sees no sign of a reversal of that trend. While involved in horticulture himself, he says that he does not see horticulture having a large place in the farming system in the forseeable future. He has not made a study of irrigation but he says that there is no doubt a great potential for it in Canterbury, but the labour requirement associated with it is likely to be greater than most people realise. Referring to the swing to cattle, he says that some of the interest in the new exotic breeds may be something of a fad. but nonetheless their appearance may raise the question whether British livestock producers are as efficient as they have been thought to be, and some second thoughts may be necessary on this subject. Professor Hudson says that he has made no detailed study of the wool marketing issue, but is inclined to the view that the day is almost past when the individual can go on trying to

dispose of his own product and that a certain amount of collectivism may be necessary in this industry as in others. Professor Hudson is not in favour of an across the board payment to farmers like that made under the stock retention incentive scheme. He thinks that farmers should have been put through a drafting gate to decide whether or not they were entitled to it. He says that there are quite a number of farmers who are well established, manv of them have inherited their farms and are wealthy and they did not need such a subsidy. There was another group who had recently

acquired farms with an eye on rising land values and they did not deserve the payment. But there was another group of recently established farmers who had responded to the Government’s call for increased production, very often as a result going into increased debt, and only they merited the payment. The attitude of farmers to subsidies was difficult to follow, he said. They subscribed to the notion of a “free competitive society,” but they promptly forgot this when it came to a question of subsidies. Reluctant to become embroiled in his old field of agricultural education, Pro-

fessor Hudson did. how- 1 ever, say that in the world today people trained in agriculture as well as in other faculties of the university needed some supplementary studies in the humanities and culture if they were to have a standard of values and a philosophy of living. A straight out technical training was not an education and he believed that up to 10 per ! cent of time should be. devoted to these wider) studies. Professor Hudson says that one of the things that he looks back on with great pleasure is his friendships and associations with manyi farmers.