AN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOR HAWKE’S BAY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume II, Issue 226, 27 August 1912, Page 5

AN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE FOR HAWKE’S BAY.

™ EDITOR. VHv Sir, — Mr. Lane’s letter and your deserve to be carefully read and weighed by every well wisher of this East Coast district. The Mormons have come among us from America and have seen the possibilities of the district and have realised that the way to deal with the young Natives of this country is by means of farming of a practical and educational type. The College soon to be opened at the Bridge? Pa will prove a serious menace to Te Ante College where, for 2o years, friends of that College have endeavoured to influence the authorities to start an agricultural branch that would attract Europeans as well as Natives. There is no place in cither island more suited for the establishment of an Agricultural College than the JEjlst Coast district. \Ve have Poverty Bay and Wairoa to the north and the important bush district to the south-west, and along the coast the magnificent pastoral country extending to Herbertville. All. these districts represent special characteristics that differ in important points from the Heretaunga Plain, but each is important and presents features that in the aggregate supsupply information that might be applied to the whole of the North Island. Your leader deals broadly with the question of an Agricultural College being established here, and the sooner our public men take up the subject the' better it will be for the future of this district. Wc are essentially an agricultural and pastoral district, and were the subject taken up in the spirit that Mr. J. NWilliams of Hastings took it up in his experiments in permanent pastures. this district, celcbiated as it is for its soil, its climate and its productions, would become much more celebrated, for as soon as science comes in to the aid of the sheep-farmer and the agriculturist, we may expect a large increase in j the pi oductiveness of the district.] The locality you suggest: as a place ] for an Agricultural College is a, proper one and it would be a very! good thing if the Hawke’s Bay Agri-1 cultural Society were to take up the' claims of the district and present a case to the Premier in favour of establishing it for the benefit of the East Coast. W'ere such a College established, elementary training could I be undertaken in every public school as the services of students could be I used for some particular work, and, j more than this, the young teachers of the district could be trained in work that, as the years go on must grow in importance, for the reason that competition in these times is not between district and district but between country and country. New Zealand has to measure her products with those of other countries, and ■ they will be measured in proportion to the scientific training and preparation of our future farmers. It is science with industry, applied to the lands, that will press us and our products to the front in the commercial world, hence the importance to be attached to the fostering of agricultural science here. A College such as you suggest .would meet a present need and both Sir. Eustace Larei and you. Mr. Editor, deserve well cf j your readers for bringing the sub-1 iect under their notice. —I am. etc., < H. HILL. I