LAND LYING IDLE

Feilding Star, Volume 9, Issue 3742, 10 June 1932, Page 7

LAND LYING IDLE

Till: RAXGITOTO BLOCK SITUATED CLOSE TO TOWN DEI’AkTM ENT SI LENT A To Kniti message says great disappointment, is being expressed at the inactivity of tin* Lands Department in connection with the settlement of tlie easy open country known as the Itangitoto block. Some 10,000 acres was acquired from the natives two years ago, and although it lies within seven miles of the town by a good metalle 1 road and is all oinro or less ploughable, and numbers of practical men with experience of local conditions are anxious Mid ready to take up suitable areas, the Lands Department maintains a stolid silence. There appears to be u woeful lack of coordination. Hundreds of acres of land adjoining a motor road is suitable for wheat growing, being similar to that which rpoduced the record wheat sample grown by the natives at Ti Kmni, only a few miles distant.. The most important, feature of this tract of country is Ihe low initial cost, £3 per acre. < dothed in short fern over plain and rollingdowns extending for several miles, the land could be cleared and grassed at very low cost ready for dairying nex; season. It a dozen men were employed by the Lands Department with mowing machines and ploughs, ten 5<J-ucre dairy farms could be brought into full, profit for the coming season. Moreover, several hundred acres of wheal; and oats could be grown at r. considerable profit. Yet the whole area, at the doors of the town, remains totally unproductive.