AGRICULTURAL CLUBS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20392, 22 October 1929, Page 9

AGRICULTURAL CLUBS.

WORK OF BOYS AND GIRLS.

STATE AID IN MOVEMENT.

[by telegraph.—press association.] "WELLINGTON, Monday.

The Department of Agriculture and tho Education Department have lately given close consideration •to reorganising the control of boys and girls' agricultural clubs, and to granting further assistanco to them. Tho last few years' work is viewed as having been partly of an experimental nature, both with regard' to the method of organisation and tho national value of the work when properlydeveloped. The present is considered a suitablo time to extend the movement, and the Minister of Agriculture, Hon. G. W. Forbes, has- accordingly approved a scheme of control and assistance which provides, inter alia, for the following:—

Whcro any approved district organisation is set up to develop tlio movement, tho Department of Agriculture will, subsidise any funds that the organisation may collect up to a maximum of £4O, not more than two such organisations to bo subsidised in any one education board district. Tho department is to havo tho right to appoint tho chairman of any of the organisations that are subsidised. _ The Department of Agriculture- is to provide the seeds and manures necessary for the clubs that are formed. Tlio department will also supply all charts and certificates in connection-with tho work and all possible assistance is to bo rendered to tho organisations set up. The cup presented by Mr. W. Stuart Wilson, of Wellington, for annual competition among boys and girls' agricultural clubs, has been won for tho 1928-2J season by Dudley Tayles, of Last Gore School, Southland, with a remarkably, heavy crop of potatoes yielding at tho rate of 31 i tons an acre. Tho runner-up was Gcorgo Loving, Huiuga School, South Taranaki, who grew an outstanding crop of mangels which weighed at the rato of 181 tons sc\vt., an aero. For tho purposes of comparing these two crops it was considered necessary to take into consideration their value. On tho basis of the current values at the time of judging, the potato crop was worth £156 and tho mangel crop was worth £135 15s an aero. In accordanco with previous practice, the Department of Agriculture is presenting Master Tayles with a gold medal and a photograph of the cup as a permanent record of his having won tho competition.