ABANDONED FARMS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 203, 11 August 1927, Page 4

ABANDONED FARMS.

TVTEW ZEALAND is not the only country in which an appreciable proportion of the farming community is finding it difficult to make a living and is consequently abandoning the struggle. Even in the otherwise highly prosperous United States the story is much the same, the size of the figures quoted merely making it still more impressive. According to a recent return issued by the American Secretary of the Department of Agriculture it appears that during the year 1926 the farm population of the country was reduced by no less a number than 619,000, just about half the total population of this Dominion, Put in another way, it is said that since the high level of produce prices reached in response to the war there has been a decrease of no less than 100,000 in the number of occupied farms. The Secretary, in the face of these data, confesses himself as forced to the conclusion that the migration of farmers towards the cities has attained an impetus which cannot be checked until an actual shortage of all food commodities is brought about and prices so forced up to a point where fanners can make a profit out of what they produce for sale.

Some suggestion has been made that these movements in the farming community are being consciously made with a view to bringing about the condition mentioned. But this suggestion is not very widely entertained, for the evidences are only ioo clear that dire nesssity to find some other means of livelihood has driven the great majority off their land. Just as with curselves, many of the migrating farmers are abandoning properties which were bargained for when land values were tremendously inflated, though, of course, there they have not, as we have, to deal with the problem of soldier settlers, ft may be that the movement that is going on, even though involuntary, may in America work the remedy of forcing produce prices up to a payable standard. But this can scarcely be regarded as a satisfactory and lasting solution of the difficulty, for the effect of better prices must inevitably be to stimulate more production, with the consequence that prices will again come down. In any event, any such remedy is not open to us hero in New Zealand, where our farmers are, in the main, dependent on the prices obtainable in oversea markets ano in competition with other exporting countries, and have no such extensive home market as is provided by America’s hundred million, or more, of consumers.