THE KARIOI ESTATE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19549, 31 January 1927, Page 6

THE KARIOI ESTATE.

Sir,—The Karioi Estate and the proposal to use it in its entirety for afforestation and the consent of the Agricultural Department for so doing, must necessarily call forth criticism from the public.. While it is the professed aim of the Agricultural Department to get the country settled by farmers it is here willing iO surrender an estate from being in a profitable state of agriculture and pasture to bo covered with forest. If this is not a national madness, it would be interesting to know by what name it can be called. The very department which is supposed to conserve the interests of agriculture is ready to surrender thousands of acres of land which it has been demonstrated will grow grain and root crops equal to any. If it is necessary to have a State forest in this region there is still ample room without encroaching on arable land. There is, for instance, the belt of country between Ruapehu and the Kaimanawas. The . plea that tho Rotorua land is too far from a railway is no excuse for surely it is no further away than many other places which are being afforested. Moreover, by the time the timber matures we will certainly, if it is there, find a means of getting it out. May I suggest that the planting of shelter belts across exposed country and plantations on places which are unsuited to agriculture or pasture should be a State enterprise, Bv so doing many hundreds of square miles of country which are now regarded as desert will bo rendered available and profitable for farms. This applies particularly to this region and to Taupo plains, also to the Kaiangaroa, where the Forestry Department has been allowed to scoop in a solid block of many thousands of acres regardless of whether much of it may be of use for agriculture. There are hundreds of square miles of sand dunes along the west ccist which need to be reclaimed by afforestation. There is the belt of country between Mangamui Bluff and Kaipara Heads on which there is room for about 300 square miles of forest. J. Attwood.