AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3193, 26 May 1915, Page 10

AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

A hundred years ago, in England, Sir John Sinclair, founder of the Board of Agriculture, as he styles himself, published a work of some 500 pages, the opening words of which run as follow: “ Agriculture, though in general capable of being reduced to simple principles, yet requires on the whole a greater variety of knowledge than any other art.” Since then the development of scientific agriculture has progressed apace, and it would require a book of not hundreds, but thousands, of pages to contain all the scientific and practical knowledge a farmer ought to have at his command. Some men have investigated the nature and properties of the soil, or the life history of the plants that grow on.it; others have studied the beneficent and harmful organisms, and the place they take in \the economy of agriculture; while the researches of students of natural history have added enormously to the volume of information that a cultivator of the soil and a rearer of stock ought to possess. The farmer has in many instances adopted the teaching of the professors, and it is a fact that the one department in which Britain confessedly outstrips all her rivals is not in any of her great staple manufactures, but in the live stock of her farms and in her agricultural implements and machinery. It is obvious that we in New Zealand" should grasp every opportunity of keeping up to date in laboursaving machines and devices for increasing the output and value of products, as well as reducing expenses. It is essential, however, that this knowledge should be available to settlers without any very great cost. The apathy with which settlers in the South Island view the slow expenditure of moneys in their midst on the development of up-to-date agriculture is astounding. Perhaps if the expenditure in the North and South Island, in the matter of agricultural demonstration, was contrasted, it might cause a little more agitation to b© brought to bear on those wlio have the spending of the money voted by the Government. In the meantime it is as well not to let the matter be quite forgotten, and it has been suggested that, to more evenly-balance matters in regard to the large sums spent on agricultural matters, experimental farms, and the like in the North Island, as compared with the fleeting view one now and again gets - of some of the experts in the south, it would be a good thing if the exhibits of the Agricultural Department, as shown at the various metropolitan winter shows, were duplicated or triplicated and set up in such towns of the South Island provinces as might be selected for a much longer period than has been custom —some months if thought desirable, —and it was seen that they were appreciated and, of course, made free to all. Some such method would perhaps have a far greater educative value than the present hurried way now adopted. The exhibits could be maintained, renewed, and added to as was deemed necessary. One cannot imagine that any body can benefit to much useful purpose by the present hurried method now adopted at the respective Winter Shows. The cost to the country of setting up these “agricultural museums” or “expositions” must be verv great, and it seems the height of foolishness to, after three days or so on view, pack up and travel to some other town, and there go through the same nrocesses, and then away,.in a day and show elsewhere. After the exhibits had been on view some considerable time in one locality, they could he set up elsewhere, or it might he feasible to maintain a permanent exhibition in each province in the South Island. Great material Innefits might well he expected to result to settlers if they had but time to view the exhibits. The various experts of the Agricultural Department might he made use of in each province, and lectures given on various tonics of interest to farmers at intervals. The aim of Governmental teaching in agriculture should be to bring all information they may have on any subject to every farm door throughout New Zealand, so that the younger generation of farmers shall have the latest information, and be encouraged to keep up to date in all matters pertaining to live stock and agriculture. If subjects pertaining to agricultural pursuits were handled by practical men at specially •well-equipped stations a livelier interest would be created in farming matters in the younger generation than is apparent at the present time.