AFFORESTATION PLAN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 159, 7 June 1937, Page 7

AFFORESTATION PLAN

AREA IN BAY OF PLENTY. TOBACCO CULTURE ALSO. \ (By Telegraph.—Special to Standard.' WELLINGTON, .Tune 7. Details of a large-scale afforestation project with unique features are announced by tire Commissioner of Forests (Hon. F. Langstone). The area concerned is a block of Crown land of 110,000 acres lying inland from Te Puke. Bay of Plenty, and running back towards Lakes Rotoehu and Rot uni a. The Minister contained that the State Forest Service has in sight a further 12,000 acres, making the total area 52.0 DD acres worked as a single forest unit

Associated with the afforestation will be the continuance of tobacco cultivation.

“The Pongakawa tobacco settlement in the Pongakawa Valley,” explained Mr Langstone, “will be continued as a Government tobacco plantation and, in conjunction with it. a forest nursery will lxi established where from 3,000,000 to 5,000,000 trees be raised annually for the next six years at least. The whole of the Pongakawa settlers have been given either tobacco or forestry work at rates of pay which conform to those of the State Forest Service workers’ agreement. “This union of tobacco culture with forest tree cultivation in one interlocking management will,” added the Minister, “enable economies of management to be effected j and give further advantage and continuity of employment such as could not, be obtained if the two industries were separately managed.”