OKOROIRE AND TIRAU.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16621, 18 August 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

OKOROIRE AND TIRAU.

| MAKING LAND PRODUCTIVE. BY F.C.R. Okoroire is a pleasant district; its trout streams, its hot mineral baths, its golf links, and bracing climate have made it a popular resort for Aucklanders through many years, but in the past its agricultural possibilities were never regarded as being particularly promising. The whole of the Waikato, however, was looked on once as practically hopeless so far as profitable farming was concerned, and Okoroire is proving its capabilities now in a manner which cannot be denied. I remember well that when x first vsited Woodstock, one of the most famous Okoroire estates, its owner assured me that' he • believed that he had discovered the secret of making that class of land, into payable grazing country. When I asked him what -was going to perform this miracle, he replied, Chewing's Fescue and Danthonia. He even went so far as to prophecy that these two grasses would turn all the country between there and Taupo into sheep pasture. To make land carry a fairly permanent grass, with the minimum of expenditure and labour, was the ideal of many farmers in those days, as it is even now. '

I rode over the Woodstock estate in company with its present owner, Air. E. Somerville, and was astonished at the great changes that have been made; the scanty herbage of inferior grasses, which was the high-water mark of culture at the time of my first visit, has given way to luxuriant pasture; the old stock-carrying capacity of the land which was once barely a sheep to the acre, has been lifted to three sheep to the acre, and it has not reached its full productive capacity yet. I saWypther estates and farms at Okoroire, ..wcfaearly everywhere I noticed the same Biu is of improvement and progress. Like Maun,., ita Okoroire will have to undergo a process of subdivision and closer settlement before it reaches its full development, and 'hen it will become largelv dairying lanuv Top-dressing pastures at Okoroire with Suitable fertilisers has transformed the appearance «nd productivity of the country, but a greater chancre vet has to tome through more intensive cultivation and closer settlement®' Between Hinuera a, <1 Puttoiru. What a promising district this is which lies on each side of the Rotorua railway between Hinuera and Putaruru/ Where it ia grassed it rolls in billows of living green between the tributaries of the 'Upper Waihou, or Thames, River. To the oast,: ward rise the- wooded Mamaku ranges, steep and bold as they run northward toward Te Aroha, but southward gradu-1 ally merging into the scarp of a leveledged plateau, which stands against the skyline as evenly drawn as a geometrical line. Westward of these ranges the country runs In on undulations to the" Waikato River, and southward in rolling ['downs and great plains almost down to Taupo. It is a land admirably suited for close settlement and high farming, because its friable kindly soils are so easily cultivated, and respond s o well to even moderate applications of fertilisers. It should be a land of fields and trees. The chestnut and the walnut, the wattle and the gum, the oak and the beech thrive here, as do fruits of all kinds, from the apple and the peach tomuch to my surprise— the orange and the lemon. The Old Oxford. Tirau—the old Oxford of coaching days -—is only a matter of a mile or two front Okoroire, but lies right on the railway. This place also has changed of recent years, and ]ias now become a prosperous farming district. Tirau is noticeable miles away by its cone-shaped hills, crowned with pines. These hills, I believe, mark the centre of old volcanic activity, which spread streams of rhyolitic lava over such a great area of country. This line of hills carries good soil, and some of the land has been down in grass for over 20 years and is still good. The lower downs land, how ever, is just the ordinary pumic soil, which covers many hundreds of square miles between the Auckland-Rotorua railway About Tirau, and beyond Tirau to Putaruru wherever this class of land has been intelligently cultivated, it has made excellent farms, which are now not only highly productive, but command a good price in'the market. At Tirau I met a number of returned soldier? who have been recently sealed on the land by the Government. Most of them were quite contented with the quality of their holdings, But some of them are very dissatisfied with the financial assistance given. One man told me that he had a considerable area of grass going to waste because he had not enough money to buy stock. "He had obtained land it was true, at a fair market value. " But what is the good of land if I have no means of working it?" he remarked. I asked him if |he could not buy stock on credit through some of the big auctioneering firms or associations, and he told me that he had tried in every way to get a line of young cattle tfn credit, and had been turned down every time. The only money he had earned from his land was by takincr in a certain number of stock to graze for other people, but the season was so good that there was more grass than stock, and nobody wanted pasture for grazing. Financing Settlers.

"What is the good of land to a man if he has not capital to work it ?" is a question which is troubling not only returned soldiers, but a good many other settlers as well. Land after all, is only the rough material; it is to the farmer what raw wool or cotton is to the manufacturer. To make land produce wealth requires machinery in the shape of stock, fencing, buildings, implements. At a time like this, when every pound of butter-fat, every carcase of mutton, or lamb, or beef, is worth so much money in the markets, land capable of producing these things should not be lvine idle. In Great Britain and in most of the old settled countries, where farms are fully equipped m the matter of fences, drains, buildings, it is considered that from £5 to £10 per acre is needed for working capital; how much more'capital then is needed to deal with the partlyimproved poorly-equipped holdings which the State is offering to returned soldiers and other settlers in New Zealand ? The State and the great banks and financial institutions generally should realise that the only way to make land yield wealth is to work it. and it cannot be worked without capital or credit. Whilst money is being piled up throughout New Zealand in the shape of deposits and accumulaI tions, it seems absurd that the labour and skill jof men and the productive capabili , ties of land should be wasted for lack of it. Under proper management there is no surer security for capital than 1 productive farms, and it is about time that the politicians and financiers of this country realised this fact, and stimulated the output of our land by providing its workers with the necessary material. Wasted Efforts, The shortage of capital for farming is not confined to returned soldiers, nor is it a question of war shortage. All through Okoroire and Tirau and Putaruru and everywhere on each side of the railway from Auckland to the Waikato, and everywhere. in fact, from the North Cape to the Bluff, are holdings lying unproductive for lack of sufficient money to work them, and men wasting their labour and theirtime in the futile effort of trying to farm without the necessary appliances. About Putaruru lies the great Selwyn estate, which was cut up a dozen or more years ago into a number of agricultural holdings and grazing runs. Some hundreds of men and women have been struggling all these years to make their holdings pay ; some have won through, but some have worked for the barest of living wages, and have little to show for their labour to-day. This land needs cultivation and manure and grass seed and fencing in the first instance to make it yield returns, and if the State had helped each of these settlers to obtain these things the Selwyn estate would have been yielding ten or twenty times as much wealth as it i is yielding now,. I