Decline In Farming

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 162, 5 April 1938, Page 13

Decline In Farming

Sir, —In your Saturday’s issue, under the heading o£ “Dominion Topics,” you quote a paragraph referring to the “decline in farming.” This must surely be a shock to those who read it—S2.2oo acres in a year less land occupied for farming purposes.

The Labour Government has not mentioned land problems since it attained office, and there are hundreds of young men like myself in New Zealand who want to make a start on the land, ■Lose capital is limited, but men who are not afraid to work and who have a thorough knowledge of farm work. They are men, too, many of them, who are far more competent to be on farms of their own than many of the so-called farmers who are settled on the land.

Last year the Farmers’ Union at their annual conference passed.a remit to urge the Government to assist farmers’ sons with limited capital to obtain land of their own, but that was as far as it went. Nothing has been done by the Farmers’ Union or the Labour Government in this direction, and I suggest that Mr. Savage and Mr. Langstone be approached on this subject at once, so that at the next election some of us will know whom to vote for—we are not going to vote for a Government that won’t help the farm labourers to become farmers. —I am, etc.,

LAND HUNGRY. Mangaonoho, April 4.