FARMING IN N.Z.

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20619, 21 November 1941, Page 3

FARMING IN N.Z.

METHODS DEFENDED REPLY TO CRITICISM SECRETARY OF UNION (Per Prepp Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. Mr. A. P. O’Shea, Dominion secretary of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, commented yesterday on a statement by Mr. C. V. Smith, president of the Now Zealand Manufacturers' Association, that, Hie solution of Now Zealand’s farming problems lay "along the lines of more diversified, more modern and more intensive farming.” Mr. O’Shea said that so far as modernness was concerned, in many lines New Zealand was ahead of most countries in the world. “Thanks largely to the work of, Mr. A. 11. Cockayne, now Director-General of Agriculture, and his successor, Mr. Bruce Levy, New Zealand has made advances in grassland farming that have been little less than amazing to (.he whole world,” said Mr. O'Shea.

”We have a system of breeding seeds from pedigree grasses which has been taken up by other countries, but which New Zealand had the honour of inaugurating. Thanks to this and to careful stock management, there have been farms in New Zealand which have produced over 4001 b. of butterfat to the acre. This land, because of its high is suitable only for grassland farming and, in fact, this is the case with a very large proportion of the country. Agriculture Limited “By its topography and climate, New Zealand must be very largely a stock 'raising country. The extent to which agriculture can be practised is, therefore, strictly limited in this direction. However. New Zealand has a very great deal to be proud of, for her agricultural implements are probably, on the whole, well in advance of any-

thing • produced elsewhere. New Zealand’s ploughs, for instance, are a striking example of this. “So far as intensive cultivation is concerned, here again there is a very great misconception. The degree of intensity of cultivation varies inversely with the degree of concentration of the adjacent population. This is a well-known economic law. Just as it would not pay New Zealand to go in for the heavy machinery industry, so it would not pay her to go into intensive cultivation for markets are not available. New Zealand has had to base its farming economy on its suitability for the country. Just as we have had to evolve our own type of Romhey sheep which, incidentally, is to-day a better type than the original English one, and just as it would be foolish for us to endeavour to change the type of sheep suitable for the country, so it would be foolish for us to depart in the main from grassland farming. If we did, it would not be very long before farmers’ problems were very considerably intensified.”