THE FARMER AND HIS LAND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21962, 20 November 1934, Page 13

THE FARMER AND HIS LAND

Sir, —It should never be forgotten that the difficulty under which .the dairy farmer is labouring at present is not in fact a farming difficulty. His trouble, the trouble of the industry, is that the farmer cannot manage under present conditions to obtain a satisfying independence and economic assurance in. and from his occupancy and use of the land he farms. Grass still grows as well as ever it did, harvest follows seeding, the principle of growth and multiplication in plant and animal is as constant as ever. So the reward of husbandry should also bo as sure. It is a matter of polity, not of farming, and the root, or one prominent root, of the presont impolity is that land is held on sufferance and under obligation out of correspondence to social and economic wisdom. Reform of the system of land holding, of land tenure, would go far toward righting the present difficulties of the dairy farmers and contribute greatly to the betterment of the whole people. Onehunga. D. M. Ross.