CLOSER SETTLEMENT

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 124, 19 February 1929, Page 13

CLOSER SETTLEMENT

Sir, —Being interested in the question of closer settlement, I read Mr. Jordan’s letter giving his impressions on one of the systems obtaining in Canada. I also notified that in a recent ballot for farms in the South Island there were only two applicants.

During the past year I wrote to the Department for information as to ’available land and was sent a foolscap-sized booklet containing-particulars of all sorts and conditions of land that could be taken up under various conditions. Does not this rather emphasise that there is plenty of land available but little or no capital wherewith to take it up?

One cannot help thinking that the Government would be well advised to study systems of financial assistance as given successfully in other colonies, such as those operating in Canada, or one in which two or three years’ grace is given before the instalments are due to be paid, rather than in adding to the apparently long list of Government-owned land. ' '

The recently purchased land near Feilding may be all that can be desired both as regards quality of land and its situation from a dairying point of view, but it is going to be heavy going for the first two or three years on a 70-acre farm with the present high price of land and stock, and would-be applicants will have to have a pretty fair capital to start with. —I am, etc., “INTERESTED.” Featherston, February 18.