HOW IS IT?

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 10 May 1912, Page 5

HOW IS IT?

/r"o the Editor.)

Sir > —As Aye are hearing a good deal about teaching farming, there is a thing I would like to see explained, which is, What is the reason that we find so few who have attended agricultural colleges turn out a success not in New Zealand alone, but in other countries What I mean by success is making farming pay, which, after all, 1 tako to be good farming. Speaking for myself, after an experience of 30 years' farming in this country, I cannot truthfully say I have come across one, though many failures, and have often asked stock and station agents and others (bankers included) if they noticed the same thing; and without exception they have told me the same, though one gentleman (a most successful man) told me he believed he came across one who had made it pay. Now, what can be the cause? Education certainly is not. But have the teachers in these agricultural colleges themselves been a farming success? I am afraid not, though in theory, yes; as farming where you have a country to pay for mistakes, and where you have to pay the banker are two 'different things. Of course, I do not include State farms in this, as they are not there to make .farming pay, and they could never go in for experiments if they were compelled to show a profit, but to show farmers what to do and what to avoid. Therefore, in that case, a farmer, if he keeps his eyes open, learns without wasting his own money.

ANXIOUS TO LEARN, EVEN NOW