AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE FARMER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20075, 16 April 1927, Page 12

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THE FARMER.

If the farmer be regarded as the backbone of the country he admittedly wins the distinction by hard work. He is perforce often debarred from the enjoyment of many of the amenities of existence as understood by town folk. If he is fired by the progressive spirit which is recognised to be so desirable in the agricultural community of the Dominion, he has to do his best to find time to lend ear to the educational ministrations of a paternal government. He cannot expect to make two blades of grass grow whore one grew before, or generally to get the best out of his land, his flocks, and his herds, unless he is prepared to learn how to pursue his calling on the most up-to-date and scientific lines. In Otago and South Lind the farmer is about to have placed within his reach a novel educational 1 opportunity, which is all the more interesting because it is the outcome of a spirit of enterprise manifesting itself in the Railway Department. Last year the Department tried the experiment of running a farmers’ excursion in the North Island—from the Waikato to Hawera —and the success ' attending that little undertaking has in fluenced it in the direction of now planning arrangements to give the' farmers of Otago and Southland a chance of combining profit with pleasure in a four-day excursion to Canterbury. The Department of Agriculture is also associated with this project on the educational side. It is the proposal of the railway authorities to run two farmers’ trains, one • from Otago, starting at Clinton on May 10, and the other from Southland, starting at Winton, in the following week. The trains will run right through to Christchurch, where the farmers will have two days at thendisposal, a feature of the programme being their conveyance by special train to Lincoln College, where the authorities are looking forward to their visit, which they can be depended upon to make both enjoyable and profitable. To ensure the success of the excursion from the Railway Department’s point of view, and to encourage i,t to offer further opportunities of the kind, it is of course necessary that the farmers of Otago and Southland should show enthusiasm in the matter, and that they should come forward in their hundreds to make the trip. The Department is making attractive concessions in regard to fares. In its praiseworthy desire to cater for the particular section of the: community concerned in this instance it should meet with an encouraging response. Not everybody enjoys a long railway journey, but the travellers on these farmers’ trains will have little reason to complain of tedium. Officials of the Department of Agriculture trill be there to see to their discreet educational entertainment and edification by> lectures on suitable subjects, while attached to the train will be a special carriage set apart for agricultural exhibits. Sufficient has been said to suggest that from the educational point of view these excursions should he attended with excellent results. They will afford the farmer an opportunity of taking a brief holiday in novel, enjoyable and mind-enlarging circumstances, and of deriving general benefit from the break in the normal routine of his labours. We hope that tho farmers’ trains, the locomotives gaily decorated perchance with wheatsheaves or other suitable emblems, the carriages emanating pastoral good-fellowship and agricultural lore, may have quite a triumphal progress on tbe ’first southern excursion planned, and that the success of this may make it the precursor of many others.