AGRICULTURAL CLUBS

Evening Star, Issue 20312, 22 October 1929, Page 13

AGRICULTURAL CLUBS

FURTHER ASSISTANCE [Put Unhid Passs Association.] WELLINGTON October 21, The Department of Agriculture and the Education Department have lately been giving close consideration to the question of reorganising the control of boys’ and girls’ agricultural clubs and of granting further assistance to them. The work of the last few rears is viewed as having been partly of an experimental nature, both with regard to the method of organisation and the national value of the work when properly deveThe present is considered a suitable time to extend the movement, and the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Forbes) has accordingly approved of a scheme of control and assistance which provides, inter alia, for the following fa) Where any approved district organisation is set up to develop the boys’ and girls’ agricultural club movement the Department of Agriculture will subsidise any funds that such organisation may collect up to a maximum 01 £4O; not more than two such organisations to be subsidised in any one education board district. The Department of Agriculture is to have the right, to appoint the chairman of any of the organisations that are subsidised. (b) The Department of Agriculture is to provide the seeds and manures necessary for the clubs that are formed. (c) The department will also supply all charts and certificates in connection with the work. (d) All possible assistance is to be rendered to the organisations set up. The cup presented by Mr W. Stuart Wilson, of Wellington, fur annual competition among the boys’ and girls’ agricultural clubs has been won for the 1928-29 season by Dudley Tayles, of East Gore School, Southland, with a remarkably heavy crop of potatoes, yielding at the rate of 31$ tons per acre. The runner-up was George Loving, Huinga School, South Taranaki, who grew an outstanding crop of mangolds which weighed out at the rate of 181 tons scwt per acre. For the purposes of comparing these two crops it was considered necessary to take into consideration their value, and on the basis of the current values at the time oi judging the potato crop was worth £ISG and the mangold crop £135 los per acre. In accordance with previous practice, the Department of Agriculture is presenting Master Tayles with a gold medal and a photograph of the cup as a permanent record of his having won the competition.