RUSSIAN FARING

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6946, 27 June 1929, Page 3

RUSSIAN FARING

A GIGANTIC SCHEME. Having refused an offer to become a sort of agricultural dictator in Soviet Russia for live years, T. D. Campbell, a wheat-grower from Montana, has arrived in London on his way homo (says a London message to the Christian Science Monitor, Boston). He had visited Russia on the invitation of the Soviet Government to give advice on agricultural problems. lie described tile Soviet offer a.s giving him virtually supreme control of the Government s 15,000,000-acro farm project, beside which his own 05,000-acre holdings in the United States seemed like a little cow pasture. “Rusia’s scheme of State farming is a tremendous project —as large a.s the plan for the Panama Canal appeared when it was first suggested —and it is by far the greatest thing ever contemplated in the history of the world's agriculture,” Mr Campbell told the livening Standard. In Moscow lie saw 5,000 young Russians being trained as tractor drivers, and he was informed that the Soviet project would provide work for 100,000 persons in the busy season. Some individual farms in the vast scheme cover from 100,000 to 500,000 acres, and within tlilce years the Soviet plans to purchase -100,000,000 dollars’ worth of agricultural and roadmaking machinery. “As a practical farmer accustomed to large undertakings, 1 think this; sclicuie is feasible,” he said. “It is the first, real recognition of the advantages of industrial agriculture which must come in every country to solve, the agricultural problem.” He added that his own j interests prevented him from accepting the Soviet offer.