THE H.B. TRIBUNE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1911. TREE PLANTING.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 220, 4 September 1911, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1911. TREE PLANTING.

The annual report upon Government tree planting operations shows that some very useful work has been done by the Forestry Department since its inception in 1893. The work is necessarily slow and it will be many years before the country can reap the full benefit of the labour and money now being expended, but the harvest should be a rich one when the crop matures. Keeping away from figures so far as possible it may be pointed out that the area planted last year totalled 2600 acres, bring ing up the total planted since commencing work to 16,310 acres. This is a poor return for the destruction of the magnificent natural forests of the Dominion, but nevertheless it represents a useful effort to repair the waste of former years. Prisoners have principally been employed upon this work and the results are claimed to be ver} satisfactory and the work so far performed by this means is valued at £32,265. This fact should be sufficient to check any inclination to believe that Government is not acting wisely in giving this work to convicts. At sonic places (Hanmer Springs and YVhakarewarewa) free labour has been also emplojed, but when we come to consider the nature of the work and the. length of time which must elapse before the plantations come into profitable use it seems wise to restrict the labour to the prisoners. At M aiotapu, the most important scene of prison labour, almost all the new country has been planted and the remaining 7000 arees are to be afforested during next winter .and operations will then be transferred to a 30,000 acre block on Kaingaroa Plains. Planting has also been carried on with more or less success in the South Island. At the two principal nurseries the cost of raising trees has been about £1 per 1000, while the average cost of planting same is £3 6 5, or a total of £7 14'- per acre. Taking the cost of raising the trees in the nurseries, together with the expenditure incurred on the plantations, it is found that on the aveiagc each acre of plantation has cost £l3 15 -. In taking these figures it must be remembered that the prison labour has been valued—probably at current rates, though we are not informed—in working out the averages. Admitting freely that the Department is doing good work we cannot help thinking that an extension of the idea of planting fiuit ifarms could also be encountered with i distinct advantage. It has been i frequently pointed out that large 1 areas of land too poor to profitably I utilise for grazing or root cropping . he used for fruit farming with results. Government. we has made a tentative effort / “ , direction north of Auckland.

and we should like to see work put lin hand elsewhere. If it will pay to plant timber trees that take many long years to come into maturity, would it not be a great deal more profitable to plant suitable areas with fruit trees and turn them over to farmers in the course of a few years as money-making propositions ? By utilising prison labour and the State nurseries ,large tracts of land could be planted with valuable fruit bearing trees and it is safe to say farmers would display the keenest desire to take up these holdings. The restoration of timber trees is no doubt a wise precaution, as we have previously remarked, but it appears to us that Government could afford to do without the cheap prison labour to make fruit farmers. Indeed it may be said with truth that we do not half value the possibilities of fruit tree planting in this country. There are miles of dusty road sides where fruit trees could be planted at trivial cost for the benefit of the travelling public. Many a suburban avenue could also grow fruit trees as easily as those of a purely ornamental species. Such a proposal might not appeal to the hard-headed “business man” of public life, but it it not such a Utopian idea that other countries have not benefited from it.