LAND SETTLEMENT

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 15 January 1929, Page 5

LAND SETTLEMENT

CONFERENCE OF OFFICERS.

CALLED BY MINISTER,

COMMERCIAL FRUITGROWING

(By Telegraph—Special to The Star.) WELLINGTON, Jan. -14. It is intended by the Minister of Lands (th© Hon. G. W.- Forbes) to call a conference of his officers to discuss land settlement on Wednesday, January 23, in Wellington. The Minister will preside, and th© conference will be attended by the Under-Secre-tary for Lands, members of the‘Land Purchase Board, and all Commission-/ grs of Crown Lands. The Minister intends to place before his officers the policy he proposes for expediting settlement, and it is probable that a further statement regarding the- Government’s intentions in this respect will follow immediately the conference has concluded.

Ad-dres-sing the luncheon of fruitgrowers, at which he was the guest, the Hon. Mr Forbes to-day remarked that as Minister of Lands, and being responsible for the settlement of the country, he was trying to get as many men as possible on the land. He felt that they had to look for the expansion of such industries as fruitgrowing to bring about closer settlement. The whole essence of fruitgrowing was that it brought a return from a reasonable sized holding, so that it was an industry in connection with which a good deal of settlement could he effected. At the inception of commercial fruitgrowing he could remember that the Government gave a- good deal of encouragement to the people to go in for orcharding, and many growers who- started enthusiastically found that there were many more problems in it than they had anticipated at the commencement. When they had in mind the alluring advertisements showing apple trees breaking _ down under big loads of lus-cious_ fruit and nicely dressed people walking about doing nothing, it looked like the Garden of Eden.

The Hon. H. Atmore: “Without the snake.” ,

“The- snake was there,” added Mr Forbes, “in the shape of woolly aphis, oodlin moth, and mussel scale.” His own experience in planting a farm orchard suggested to him that with the millions of pests which- had to he dealt with the farmer found it almost impossible to run an orchard; in fact, if he had to maintain his own orchard it would need so much attention that he would have no time left for -politics.