SUCCESS IN FARMING

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 135, 4 December 1935, Page 18

SUCCESS IN FARMING

GREAT SKILL REQUIRED

"NOT A DUFFER'S. JOB"

In a speech at the opening of the new home of the Avoncroft Agricultural College, Lord Bledisloe criticised England's mental and vocational "lopsidedness," and appealed for the training of agricultural workers on a new* and broader basis. The college has been transferred from its original home at Offenham, in the Vale of Evesham, to more commodious quarters at Stoke Prior, near Bromsgrove, and the object of Lord Bledisloe's visit was to declare open the new premises.

Lord Bledisloe ilnveiled a plaque commemorating the occasion, and in the grounds planted three trees —a silver spruce, the gift of Mrs. Edward Cadbury, and a rimu tree and a manuka brought from New Zealand when Lord Bledisloe returned home recently.

He recalled that Avoncroft was founded 10 years ago "through the enlightened beneficence of the Cadbury family." "However valuable up-to-date agricultural training may be," he said, "it is, as Denmark has abundantly proved, but 'the dry bones' of rural education unless it be vitalised and enriched by the vision of the fuller life which the more general and generous training of the mind and the formation of life's highest ideals open to the student. . •

"There is no occupation that requires for its success more skill, ingenuity, or resourcefulness than farming. It is not a duffer's job, but that of a man of exceptional capacity and comprehensive outlook. The raising of even the best farm products is of little avail unless they are of the description that the public want and can be put on the market at a profit. For this, business training is essential.

"England is suffering acutely' from mental and vocational lopsidedness, which not only limits the capacity for abounding happiness, but makes a man unadaptable to the varying exigencies 'of modern life, and therefore a ready prey to incurable misfortune in days of economic adversity.

"It is this lack of adaptability, resourcefulness, and self-confidence, based on too narrow an educational curriculum and too cramped a vocational environment, which is restricting emigration to the all too empty but fertile and sunny lands which constitute the splendid heritage overseas of our British race, and is operating seriously against the warm welcome the Governments of our overseas Dominions might otherwise extend to migrants from this over-populated country.

• "Before we as a nation can go in and possess with confidence and hope these good lands we must create those conditions at home which- alone can enable our people effectively to grasp the opportunity they present and <urn it into a rich legacy for posterity.