Farm adviser off to Samoa

Press, 22 September 1980, Page 10

Farm adviser off to Samoa

PA Wellington A Nelson farm adviser, Mr Colin Stewart, has left for Western Samoa to begin a two-year assignment managing a pilot cattle-under-trees project in association with forestry development on the island of Savai’i. Mr Stewart, . accompanied by his wife, previously worked with the Ministries of Agriculture and Co-operatives in Fiji for four years and a half. His Samoan assignment, under New Zealand’s Bilateral Aid Programme, will be to develop a beef cattle project from its present stocking Of 30 to 200 head over the two years. Fenced pasture under the newly established for-

est is expected to increase from 100 ha to 600 ha in that time. Based at Asau on the north-west comer of Savai’i, Mr Stewart will join five New Zealand advisers engaged on the forestry work — one of the biggest projects in New Zealand’s Samoan aid programme. Mr Stewart is originally from the West Coast, where he spent 20 years farming. His home is now in Nelson. He began his Fijian assignment as a V.S.A. volunteer. After managing a dairy farm, he became general manager of Fiji’s Farm Management Services Co-operative Association. based in Suva.