ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL BOARD.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 14 October 1922, Page 9

ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL BOARD.

In the English Board of Agriculture's annual report it is stated there was to be observed by the teaching staff of the agricultural colleges an increased earnestness and keenness amongst the students, and that their work was "above the average of the ordinary years." No doubt the emits* call for this earnestness. The man who wants to succeed must equip himself for success. A happy-go-lucky attitude to life as it exists in modern times is calculated to place the unfortunate individual in a backwater where lie will move slowly round and round for the period of his life, unless some unlooked-for stroke of luck sends hiiii away on the flood. Strenu-

ousness m pursuit of a good purpose has . become more than ever laudable, and slackness almost immoral. There is expressed in the report the opinion that, the prospects of men receiving agricultural training getting appointments at home or abroad is less favourable than in former years. This is due to the world-wide business depression. It is, no doubt, unsatisfactory from the professorial point of view, but it is of a modified kind when we consider what the real aim of these ! colleges ought to be. Surely it is the inculcating of up-to-date methods in the rising generation of our farming population more than in the equipment of men for service abroad or for salary earning at home, although, that may in certain cases he beneficial to ourselves. The pessimism of the report in this particular is founded on the • • hypothesis that the agricultural out- . i look is gloomy. No doubt farmers have experienced a bad year in 1921, but one year does not make a,cycle any more than one shallow makes a summer. The hypothesis is founded on the merest conjecture, .and on nothing producible so far a I know. Cheer J up, professors and farmers, and hold on!