KIWIS AND THE LAND

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22850, 21 January 1949, Page 4

KIWIS AND THE LAND

Sir, —On Tuesday I attacked your head-lines, “Kiwis’ Troubles Ironing Out’’ and pointed out that out of 12,082 men graded A there are still, after all these years,' 5311 men waiting for a farm. Your footnote says,“These matters are in the hands of the Dominion executive” and “there were no major issues on which remits could be framed without traversing ground already well covered.” That means that the R.S.A. has been fighting for years against the grievances I pointed out and are now in a stalemate and can do no • more. In that case your headline is misleading. These 728 men who have been placed on land brought and cut up by the Government may be “reasonably contented” but what a small number that is compared with the 5311 still waiting! I would like to point out to these 5311 the advisability of looking out for farms for themselves. The Government is buying the best land it can get, land like Kiore and Hihiroroa, that has been well farmed for many years and yielding big returns. It has to pay prices calculated on that big income Then it loads that land with expensive improvements. The poor Kiwis who think themselves lucky to draw a section will find themselves deep in dept even if prices keep up, which of course they won’t.

At the same time there are farms run down for lack of maintenance, their owners getting old and crippled by the difficulty of getting labour. Let the Kiwis avoid the high-priced, wellfarmed land and buy what has “run down and gone back.” Then, young and vigorous, they will soon bring their farms back to high returns. They would live in a shack for a year or two till they have cut down the mortgage and built fences and yards, then woolshed and last of all the house.

The Government is putting last things first, and those who buy a completely improved farm from the Government, will rue it. Apparently 4705 men have already bought farms for themselves with government money. That cuts out most of the red-tape and the years of waiting and of working for wages under Government supervisors.

To these young Kiwis starting on their own farms I’d say plant macrocarpas. In 1917 I planted some on what was only good second-class country and my successor tells me that last year he sawed up enough good building-timber from four of these to enable him, with some help from an abandoned house, to build a new house for his son. He also says that branches cut from quite a young tree arc surprisingly durable as posts. Alongside my house here I have a young macrocarpa growing on a sticky pug sub-soil which I planted in 1936. It is now 48in. in circumference at 3ft level and about 30 ft high. I

reckon I could get two stockyard posts, a strainer and a post of two out of that tree and you could grow 300 to an acre. What would be the value of that delivered at your door? THOS. TODD [The headline did not state that all the troubles had been ironed out, but indicated that they were in the process of being ironed out.—Ed.]

Sir, —There is a general statement in Mr. Todd’s letter of January 18 thai should be backed up by details of returns from a specific property. Mr Todd says: “But is the Government really trying to get these men on the land? It is strongly suspected that it finds the high price of wool so attrau tive that, after seizing the land for the soldiers, it is farming the land for its own benefit instead of cutting it up and handing it over.” A property that has been farmed b) the Lands Department for over 20 years is that at Te Wera in the Matawai district. The Coates Government bought this property about 1926-27, paying some £60,000 for about 10,000 acres. Is Mr. Todd able to show that the returns from this State farm justify a valuation of £60,000, plus tlie value of improvements made during the past 23 years? If the department has been running this farm at a loss, then it would beadvisable to hand it over rent-free tc any soldiers that will farm it to advantage. It would be of interest to see a comparative statement of the result of farming operations under the presen) Labour Government since 1935 as compared with the pre-Labour Government’s operations. Which Government would prove the better fanner? LIBERAL