SMALL FARM PLAN

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 293, 6 September 1932, Page 8

SMALL FARM PLAN

Workable Proposition DEFENCE BY EXPERT Scheme’s Merits Stressed The opinion that the cost of smallfarm establishment was not high, and was in no way to be compared with the average present-day over-capital-ised small holding, often quoted to prove the fallacy of the small farm plan for the settlement of unemployed men and their families, was expressed in a statement made yesterday by Mr. A. H. Cockayne, Assistant-Director-General of Agriculture. Mr. Cockayne is the chief executive officer of the Government’s small farm plan. “The main contention against the small farm plan,” Mr. Cockayne said, "is that it does not supply adequate means for a family to be properly provided for. In other words, it is said that such holdings are too small from which to earn a livelihood, and it is assumed that the making of such a statement automatically becomes proof that small holdings are of no possible significance. “From the outset it has been recognised that, to begin with, unemployed families on small holdings will have to be assisted by the State so far as subsistence is concerned until they get on their feet. What the scoffers say is that they cannot ever get on their feet, and hence the plan has no good points to recommend it.” Principles of the Scheme. The four basic principles behind the plan were that living on the land was cheap, small holdings could be made highly productive, additional resident labour would be beneficial to farmers, and small holdings reduced State liability as far as unemployed were concerned* ‘Let us take the first point that living on the land is cheap,” Mr. Cockayne said. “Whether we like it or not, it has to be admitted that even in normal time a large percentage of wage-earners buttressed on the town rather than on the country do not earn a large amount in the year. It has also to be admitted that there has been a distinct tendency for this percentage to increase. In other words, the percentage on or below the bread line tends to increase. “What I want the public to fully realise is that the smaU farm plan is designed to give some help to some of those on or below the bread line, and is not designed to represent a land settlement policy for those who have the money to establish or partly establish themselves to become farmers on a large scale. What is aimed at is that some of those who can at present only manage an existence at the State's expense should become partly selfsupporting, and in most cases finally wholly self-supporting on a basis not inferior to the ordinary bread line family of to-day.” Growing Own Food. It should be possible for the man on a small holding to reduce his cost of living by £5O a year by producing foodstuffs, and If he could make £lOO a year he would be as well off as a number of wage-earners in work. It was cheaper to live buttressed on the land than entirely on the capacity of an employer to pay wages. After dealing at length with possibilities of high production, and farm labour supply, Mr. Cockayne said:—• “Given the right type of holding, the right type of holder, and realisation of maximum production along diversified lines, the small farm plan offers prospects that can be lightly derided only by those who have no proper conception that, in any country where the population is increasing and is a primary producer, intensification of production on small areas must more and more become the main avenue whereby settlement of families on the land should take place. “ ‘You are advocating the development of a peasantry,’ you will say. Well, if I am, let us remember that the conditions of New Zealand to develop a super-peasantry and a prosperous and contested one are better than in any other part of the world, or at any rate immeasurably superior to those of Denmark.”