The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1907. The Ministerial Visit.

Feilding Star, Volume II, Issue 492, 10 February 1908, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1907. The Ministerial Visit.

To-day the Minister of Lands and of Agriculture (the Hon. R. McNab) 13 paying an official visit to Feilding, and he has received a hearty welcome. Ministerial visits to this district are like those of angels or white cranes — few and far between. We trust that Mr McNab will be so much impressed with the heartiness of the welcome extended and with tho richness of the countryside that he will strongly recommend his colleague, the Minister of Railways to visit the district also at an early date. The countryside out Apiti and Rimbolton way needs railway -facilities, and we are assured that "development" is the watchword of the present Ministry. Today, however, Mr McNab has come into the Feilding district for a specific purpose. He has come to see for himself the fitness of Feilding as a centre for the establishing of a Dairy Experimental School. There are numerous claimants for the School, but Feilding, besides being set in the midst of a prosperous dairying centre, has offered to provide the principal means for the School ; that is to say, Mr Lethbridge has offered a fifty-acre site free of cost to tho State. v This question of a Dairy School represents years of agitation throughout the dominion ; in fact, the chief dairy expert of the Agricultural Department made the suggestion fifteen years ago. It seems incredible that the thing should have been so long hung up, especially when one reads the following extracts from that fifteen-year-old report: — The want of an experimental dairy school is now becoming evident to all reasonably versed in practical dairying. . . . The time has now arrived when the condition of the industry demands it, for the growing magnitude of our dairy trade and the peculiarities of our situation will continue to create problems, and difficulties in the , manufacture of butter and cheese which can only be solved by experiments and investigations reliably conducted. . . . There is a great field open to us in tho way of conducting dairy experiments, and the most authoritative and serviceable way to carry out these is by means of a dairy school. . . . I contend, so far as dairying is concerned^ that it is incumbent on the State to supply reliable and valuable information to farmei-Sj and to put that information forward in,, such a way that even the most apathetic will be taught to put in force the truths brought to light. If that time (fifteen years ago) demanded the Dairy School, how much more urgent is the need to-day? We believe that Mr McNab is a Minister Who Does Things, and there will bo no fifteen-years' wait under his regime. When he has visited the various sites and seen for himself the qualities, conveniences, facilities, and surroundings afforded by each, we believe he will settle the site on its merits. And as he is not only a practical general farmer, but a specialist in dairying matters, as well as a genuine man of the land, we have no hesitation whatever in leaving the issue to him. A Minister with the gifts possessed by Mr McNab could not fail to be impressed with the* almost ideal situation and conditions that Feilding possesses as the site for a Dairy School.