FARMING METHODS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 120, 15 February 1926, Page 3

FARMING METHODS

INFLATION OF VALUES A NATIONAL TROUBLE AN IDEAL DAIRY HOLDING “Dominion” Special. Auckland, February 11. Those New Zealanders who feel gloomy about the future of farming, especially dairying, in New. Zealand, may well take heart from some considered opinions expressed by the Hon. W I’ember Reeves, who arrived in Auckland yesterday after a tour of the Waikato and Upper Thames Valley districts. “It is 32 years since I last saw the Waikato,” said Mr. Reeves, “and I have been greatlv impressed by the extraordinary contrast between the district as it is'now and as it was then. In particular I find that the tract of what was deemed poor and almost uncultivatable land between Auckland and the Middle Waikato has been much reduced by cultivation, cleaning up, and the use of fertilisers. I have been immensely impressed by the improvement in sheep and cattle, especially the latter.”

Still Mr. Reeves declares that there is much to do. “Any visitor from an older country would be struck by the areas of land in the Waikato that are yet unused,” he said. “Some are still in fern and manuka, others are overgrown with blackberry, ragwort, or pennvroyal, others again are swamps. I am well aware of the difficulties. People tell me, and I believe it, that some of the swamps are most difficult to drain, that other neglected lands are Native leaseholds, but one principal reason—and ’ must give it—is that many individuals are holding too much land. Whenever I have seen a really dirty and neglected holding I have nearly always found after careful inquiry that the settler has too much land for his capital and cannot employ labour to vyork it. A great many men have failed to realise how intensive a business dairying is. 1 However, the progress of the past 30 years has been wonderful, and I am convinced that 1 the race of people that has got this country will not let it stand still. In another 15 years the productivity of the Waikato should be doubled. If science, applied to the breeding of stock and improvement of the soil, has done so much in recent years, what will it not do in future?” On his tour of the Dominion Mr. Reeves set himself seriously to find out the after-effects of the boom in laud values, and particularly what proportion of farmers weie gravely embarrassed. Although in some districts he found the proportion to. be large, those districts were not so extensive as he had thought. “The inflation of values is a serious matter, and the country will take a long while to get over it,” he declared. “I want to emphasise that it is a national trouble, and gives occasion for great regret, but it does not mean that the country is on the edge of bankruptcy, or is facing disaster. Our rural country, on the whole, is sound. Large districts, especially in the South Island, have been ami are almost free front land speculation. In such districts there have been few changes of ownership for many years. It is there that I have found people looking most prosperous.” Asked in what way he believed that the troubles of the Northern dairy farmer would be overcome, Mr. Reeves said the remedy was a gradual further subdivision of laud. The typical dairying property, he considered, should be otic whicli a man and his family could work to full advantage. “In Europe,” said Mr. Reeves, “dairying is regarded as a peasant industry. Here it is thought to 'be one of a substantial farmer. almost a landholder, in fact. That to mv mind is not the right ideal. I should be sorrv to envisage a peasant population as rough and backward as those which inhabit many parts of the Continent, but I believe there should ' r row up in New Zealand a class of enlightened small holders working dairy farms in the most efficient way bv their own labour.”