SOUTH AFRICAN FARMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 21068, 30 December 1931, Page 10

SOUTH AFRICAN FARMS.

DEPRESSION AND OPTIMISM.

WOOL AND MAIZE CROPS. [FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] CAPETOWN, Nov. 6. Despite (he depressed state of agriculture in South Africa Major E. W. Hunt, in his presidential address to the South African Agricultural Congress, spoke hopefully, basing his optimism on trebled wool and doubled maize production since 1911 and on the fact that, in spito of the lug drop in values, the Union exported £873,438 more in foodstuffs last year than in 1929. But for the next ten years, Major Hunt, said, farmers would have to be satisfied to live on the same frugal scale as to-day and forgo new capital undertakings, with the object of ridding themselves of the grievous burden of £10.000,000 a year they had to bear in the shape of interest on bonds. In the same way he looked to the Government to apply a quarter of the profits from mining to the redemption of railway loans, which, at a charge grown to over £5,000,000 a year in interest, were a constant, menace of increased railway rates. "And to increase the railway tariffs on farm produce." said Major Hunt, "would he the surest way 1 know of driving farmers to insolvency, adding to the unemployed, retarding agricultural development and diminishing the country's food supplies."