TEACHING FARMERS

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 208, 29 May 1926, Page 16

TEACHING FARMERS

MORE AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION WANTED. At the conference of the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand yesterday a remit from Masterton requesting the Minister of Agriculture to see that a fair share of the education grant be spent in agricultural education was endorsed. , , A delegate remarked that ere way to obtain the desired end would be to make a farmer Minister of Education. A further remit from Masterton, urging that farming interests should have reasonable representation on the Board of Governors for tho proposed Agricultural College, was also carried. Mr. R. D. D. Mcl.ean moved that, seeing the success of the Feilding Technical School of Agriculture had attained, tho Minister of Education be urged to set up similar schools in other districts. Mr. McLean declared, with all due respect to the proposed Agricultural Col’ege, that more practical results would be obtained from the establishment of such schools as that «if Feilding. The motion was earned. A remit was also submitted asking tho Agricu tural Department to concentrate on research work, particu’arly with a view to ascertaining the causes and remedies of stock diseases, the destruction of noxious weeds and pests, an bush sickness problems. Mr. R. D. D. McLean advocated that the Government should offer a prize of ■£lo,ooo for anyone who could invent a mixture which would destroy blackberry and other noxious weeds which were theatening to overrun the country. The remit was carried, and it was also decided to call the attention of the Departments of Land and Agriculture to the grave danger caused by tLe practically; unchecked advance of noxious weeds on Crown, Native, idle, and neglected European-owned lands, which now threaten large areas of well-farmed land. The president (Mr. W. Perry) said it would be a fine thing if the Government would acquire the Rimutakas, and hand them over to the Wellington City Council as an endowment. What a splendid reserve the Rimutakas would make, he said, if planted in pinus in. signis. Other areas in different parts of the Dominion cou’d be similarly treated. Such action would do much to stop the spread of noxious weeds. It was decided to ask the Government to plant with suitable trees waste lands such as the Rimutakas, and country where noxious weeds had taken possession.