ON LOAN TO LONDON

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26842, 5 August 1948, Page 8

ON LOAN TO LONDON

DOMINION AGRICULTURE EXPERT ADVICE ON GRASS LANDS P.A. WELLINGTON, Aug. 4. To assist the Agriculture Department of Great Britain in its campaign for the development of grassland farming, New Zealand’s Assistant Director-general of Agriculture, Mr R. B. Tennent, left for Britain by air to-day. Announcing this, the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Cullen, said Mr Tennent’s visit was being made at the express wish of the United Kingdom Government. Britain’s agricultural expansion programme required the utmost development of the resources of home-grown feed for animals and particularly an improvement of the country’s grasslands. “In England and Wales public meetings have been arranged at large centres throughout the country, with addresses by officers of the Ministry of Agriculture. This campaign will be continued next winter, and the British Agriculture Department expressed the view that it would be of great assistance to them if the New Zealand Government could release Mr Tennent for a lecture tour.” he added.

“ Though New Zealand can ill afford the absence of such a senior officer at a time when every effort is being directed to the production of more food for Britain, anything which will assist the people of the Homeland in their present difficulties must receive our fullest backing, therefore the New Zealand Government gladly acceded to the request,” said Mr Cullen. The Government felt that this request implied a high compliment to the farming industry of the Dominion and recognition of the work and skill that nad _ made New Zealand’s pastoral farming something to be quoted with envy all over the world. Mr Tennent will be joined later in t E. B. Levy, Director of the Grasslands Division. Mr Tennent is well known in Otago, where ne was for some years Director of the Fields Division.