FARMERS AND THE BALLOT

Southland Times, Issue 17969, 9 March 1917, Page 5

FARMERS AND THE BALLOT

SUPERVISION OF SOLDIERS’ FARMS ACTION IN SOUTH CANTERBURY. (Per United Press Association.) TIMARU, March 8. A meeting of about sixty farmers at Geraldine adopted a programme of duties for the supervising committee for soldiers’ farms. Out of pocket expenses only will be allowed. Farmers’ stock, implements, etc., will be carefully valued, with attention to the state of the land, buildings, and fences. Farms may be pooled and worked on the cooperative system. The committee may refuse to take over farms in a bad financial position. The Government is to give assistance in labour, perhaps by allotting balloted men classed for home service. The farms are to be handed back as valuable as w'hen taken over, and if possible provision is to be made for the wives and families of the men sent away. Mr Burbury, Mr Frostick’s adviser, ex. pressed approval of the programme. Other proposals concerning the constitution of the committee, and the nominating of a number of men from whom the Efficiency Board should make a selection, were put aside on several grounds, one being that the Board would not know the men, and the meeting, after the nomination of sixteen, elected five of themselves.

Replying to a question concerning labour, Mr ' Burbury said lie was not authorised to say what the Government had in view, but he believed that labour would be found for those willing to put in wheat. If a farmer agreed to put in wheat probably the Efficiency Board would recommend that the man be left till the end of May. It was said that the end of June would be better, as the season had been so dry.

Twenty-six farmers signified that they would put in wheat if labour was assured.

A meeting of farmers at Clandeboye, a dairying and cropping section of Geraldine County, resolved that it was impossible to maintain production if more men were taken from farmers.

The delegate to a meeting at Temuka was asked to recommend that a list be compiled of owners willing to give or let land for cropping, applications to be called from men willing either singly, in partnership, or in syndicates to crop such land, the Government to be asked to supply the seed (to be returned); a list of implements available for loan or hire for sucli use to be compiled. Other resolutions demanded that farm workers be exempted till non-essential callings are exhausted, and that a special session of Parliament be called to place the affairs of the country, especially regarding land, on a business way. It was stated that several landowners who were asked to lease their land for cropping, said they were going to put it in grass.