Agricultural leader dead

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33777, 25 February 1975, Page 2

Agricultural leader dead

The death has occurred suddenly of Mr T. P. Lowe, of Windermere, in Mid - Canterbury, who was chairman of the committee that elects producer-members to the Meat and Wool Boards. He was 63. Mr Lowe, who had a long record of service to the farming industry, and to the community in which he lived, came into greater prominence in May, 1972, when he was the sole dissenting vote when the electoral committee of the Meat and Wool Boards voted to recommend to growers for favourable consideration the proposals of the Wool Marketing Corporation Establishment Company, which had suggested the establishment of a woolmarketing corporation to

move quickly into the acquisition of all shorn wools. Mr Lowe was joined on the committee by others of a similar view, and when, in 1973, the committee had a majority of members opposed to compulsory asquisition of the clip, he was elected chairman, an office he still held. The longest-serving member of the committee — he was on it for 22 years — Mr Lowe stood for a freelycompetitive system of marketing both wool and meat. Bom in Ashburton, he was the son of Mrs Lowe and of the late Mr W. T. Lowe. He attended the Winslow Primary and Ashburton Technical Schools. He was a shepherd on his father’s farm in the Hinds district until his marriage, when he acquired a property in the same district and began farming on his own account. For the last

26 years he and his wife had lived in thd Windermere homestead. A family company now farms properties at Windermere, Ealing, Hinds, and Lynnford in Mid-Cantefbury. A noted breeder of Dorset Hom and Poll Dorset sheep, Mr Lowe established the second Dorset Hom stud in the country in 1936, and, in 1961, the eighth Poll Dorset stud, which at the time of his death was the thirdlargest flock of the breed in the country. He was a show judge of both breeds. From 1956 until 1973, Mr Lowe was a member of the council of the New Zealand Sheepbreeders’ Association, and for many years he was chairman of the Poll Dorset and Dorset Hom breed committee. Since 1956 Mr Lowe had been a member of the South

I Canterbury Catchment Board, > and since August, 1972, its chairman. He was the ’ longest-serving member of ■ this board. A former presiI dent of the Ashburton Agricultural and Pastoral Asso- : ciation, and a former chair- , man of the Hinds branch of Federated Farmers,’ he had I been chairman of the , Tinwald-Valetta Irrigation ■ Committee. : He had iong service, too, on the Hinds Domain Board, iof which he was a former ■ chairman; he was a former member of the Anglican ves- ' try of the Hinds parish; he i served on the Hinds school I committee; and was associ- , ated with the building of i swimming baths at Hinds as : a war memorial project after the Second World War. In addition to Mrs Lowe, Ihe leaves three daughters i and four sons.