HOMES, GARDENS, FARMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 5, 6 July 1939, Page 8

HOMES, GARDENS, FARMS

A Government proposal to shift Taita market gardeners to the Manawatu, and to shift Manawatu dairy farmers in order to make room for the market gardeners, is causing a good deal of discontent, which seems to be latent at Taita and outspoken in the Manawatu. If the first legal, compensated eviction —the eviction of the market gardeners —could be avoided, then, it seems, the second eviction need not happen. Therefore, considering the opposition that is being met with by the Government, is it not time that the Government should answer the question raised weeks ago —whether the ilutt Valley (including the upper part of the valley) does not contain plenty of accessible building land which is not market gardening land and which j could be used by the Government j for housing purposes without dis-j placing the Taita market gardeners j and therefore without displacing the dairy farmers who so strongly protest. If the house-building authorities can secure sufficient lower-value land of second-rate grass capacity, and possessing no other agricultural! capacity worth mentioning, why! should the richer market gardening I land.be taken for housing? That question still awaits an answer. It is true that there is an ideal called closer settlement. It was a very practical ideal in the days when Messrs. Ballance, McKenzie, and Seddon broke up big estates of thousands of acres. Closer cow settlement then replaced sheep settlement, under statutory power of compulsory purchase. So far, so good. But has closer settlement no lower limit? The closest settlement we know (short of flats and tenements) is dwellings. At one remove from these there is market gardening, and at the second remove there is dairying; and these two forms of closer settlement should not be disturbed for the sake of housing, if equally suitable housing land is at hand. Compulsory purchase of land entered the law at a time when big sheep areas were in-1 deed an impediment to progress. Certainly neither dairying nor market j gardening can be regarded today as these big sheep-walks were regarded forty years ago. Dairying is relatively close settlement, and, by export, helps to provide the essential sterling, which cannot be said of gardening or housing. It is also true that there is an ideal called love of home. This ideal can be found on many farms. It would be absurd to say that it is to be found on all farms or in all market gardens, for experience shows that both farmers and market , gardeners sometimes sell in the open market when they obtain their price. But many families are sincerely attached to market gardens or to dairy farms on which they have lived for many years; and a Government should think twice before buying ; them out compulsorily on financial i terms that ignore the sentimental claim and which also may fail to compensate for the fact that a farmer or a market gardener, when he moves on to new land, even if it be good land, may have to toil for years j before he can adapt it to the production and convenience of the land he has left. Even in the days when social conscience was against the big sheep-walk, a dispossessed owner could retain a homestead block, with his home. That cannot be done on a compulsorily purchased imall dairy farm. On these and other grounds, we sympathise with farmers and market gardeners who do not wish to be compulsorily bought out. Again we ask: Is there no housing I alternative?