FARMERS AND MIGRATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 113, 14 May 1937, Page 8

FARMERS AND MIGRATION

If the opinion expressed by the Dominion executive of the New Zealand Farmers' Union, at their meeting in Wellington' yesterday, "that the time was not opportune for New Zealand to adopt a largescale immigration policy" is to be taken as representative of the farming community as a whole, then the rest of the public may be excused for regarding it as one more example of short-sighted parochialism. Delegates are said to have favoured the idea of attempting to induce "selected boys and girls" to migrate under some control scheme similar to that adopted by the Flock House trustees. While the Flock House scheme was certainly successful, the same cannot be said of similar schemes in the past not sponsored by Flock House. Moreover, at its best the Flock House system. applies to farming alone, and that on a minor scale which hardly touches the fringe of New Zealand's problem—this is that of securing people to develop the country generally, and supplying the deficiency caused by the low natural increase which threatens in the near future a stationary population and consequent stagnation. Of this aspect of the problem and of the needs of the rest of the community there is not one word from the farmers. And yet at the same time the Dominion executive of the Farmers' Union can express concern at the "present-day tendency for farmers' sons to drift to the, towns and cities." Why? Because, they say, "there are few prospects of their being able to settle on farms of their own." As a remedy it is suggested that "the Government should assist financially" so that "these trained and experienced young farmers could obtain land of their own." Presumably the "finance" would be found by the general taxpayer. It ought to be clear to the farmers that not along such lines of thought is there any hope of solving New Zealand's problem of population and, with it, assuring their own future.