AGRICULTURAL EXPERT ARRIVES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26916, 30 October 1948, Page 4

AGRICULTURAL EXPERT ARRIVES

Dr Wilbert Clayton Hopper, the re-cently-appointed Commercial Secretary (Agriculture) at the Office of the High Commissioner for Canada in New Zealand, arrived at Auckland by the Aorangi this week and will assume his new duties at Wellington in the near future. , , Dr Hopper was born at Chelsea, Quebec, on August 16, 1894. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1920 (8.5. A.). From 1921 to 1926, he was field husbandman with the Dominion Experimental Farm. Between 1926 and 1930, he held the position of chief assistant in the Division of Field Husbandry. He later went to Cornell University to take postgraduate work in agronomy and agricultural economics. While at Cornell he accepted an instructorship in agricultural economics to do marketing research and teaching. He received his degree of Master of Science from Cornell in 1930. In 1932, he obtained a Ph.D. degree in economics and became an Extension Professor in Marketing at Cornell.

In 1934, Dr Hopper became senior agricultural economist -in the United States Department of Agriculture at Washington. Later in the year he was appointed chief of the Division of Marketing' and secretary to the Canadian Marketing Board. In 1937. he was appointed principal economist in the Economics Division of the Canadian Department of Agriculture. On November 20, 1946, his appointment as Canadian Trade Commissioner (Agricultural Specialist), Department of Trade and Commerce, was announced. From September, 1947, to October, 1948, he was Commercial Secretary (Agriculture) at Sydney, Australia, from where he came to New Zealand. Before and during the war. Dr Hopper served on a number of Canadian Government committees. He was a member of the Canadian delegation to the Food and Agricultural Organisation Conference at Quebec City in 1945, and the conference of the same organisation at Copenhagen in 1946. He has written extensively on agricultural economics. His writings include: “ The Marketing of Perishable Farm Products in Canadian Cities ” (1937), “An Economic Study of the Consumption of Milk and Cream in Certain Urban and Rural Districts of Canada” (1938), “Consumption of Meat in City Households” (1942), and “Income and Food Consumption,” u contribution to the Canadian Journal of 'Economics and Political Science (1943).

While in New Zealand, Dr Hopper will devote his attention to the economic aspects of production, the marketing of agricultural commodities and Canadian-New Zealand trade in primary agricultural products.