EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF WINTER SHOWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3195, 9 June 1915, Page 16

EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF WINTER SHOWS.

The value of last week's Otago A. and P. Society’s Winter Show lies mainly in its educative force, and immediate benefits are not necessarily anticipated. Here and there this phase of the matter is entirely overlooked. The Agricultural and Pastoral Association aims at the improvement in production, and with that, end in view devises the means whereby a healthy rivalry is created amongst those interested in country pursuits. It is due to their efforts that stock-breeders and farmers living in different provinces are induced to come forward and enter in friendly competition the best, of their stock and farm products. The show has been planned and arranged to teach the farmer by practical demonstration what competent judges hold to be the ideal in each particular class; and who will deny when these entries are classed, judged, and prizes awarded according to their merit by skilled men, but that it is an education to whoever will use their eyes? The fact bf the value of using suitable artificial fertilisers on the farm was emphasised by many of the displays, as, for instance, by the Government’s exhibit and the Education Beard’s stand. /Necessarily much experimental work must be undertaken that will not prove financially profitable to the experimental stations themselves; but operations in tillage, manuring, etc., must be undertaken in order to emphasise the necessity of avoiding certain methods. No private farmer would undertake to spend his money freely in the same way; but they, generally speaking, are out after profit, while experimental work is to demonstrate facts not previously known. The profit resulting from the farm experimental work does not come to the various stations, but to the public in general. The exhibitions at the Winter Show by the various State schools are on the right lines, and the work of planting, harvesting, etc., of the various products of the land set out by the various school children cannot but result in great benefits to the future farmers of this Dominion. The show from the social or intellectual aspect must not be overlooked. It has been said that “cultivating of the mind can be formed alone, or it, can be done in the presence of others with an experienced person to act as a farmer.’’ We have the practical instruction, or the direct demonstration of the perfected article of the skilled agriculturist and nastoralist offered at these periodic shows to those interested in farming pursuits. Agriculture is of primary importance to the national welfare, and the more thickly populated the Dominion becomes, so will there be greater need of intense or up-to-date farming methods.