NEW DIRECTOR

Southland Times, Issue 22317, 7 May 1934, Page 11

NEW DIRECTOR

FIELDS DIVISION.

MR TENNENTS CAREER.

Mr R. B. Tennent, who has been appointed director of the Fields Division of the Department of Agriculture, hi succession to Mr J. W. Deem, has been a familiar figure in the development of scientific farming in Otago and Southland for 14 years, for the greater part of which time he has been in charge of the work of the fields division in these provinces. The new director is a native of Bathgate, Scotland, and received his early agricultural training in Queensland. He spent 13 years in the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture as an instructor, and later as manager of the Warren State Experimental Farm. After serving as a commissioned officer in the Australian Imperial Forces in France he continued his studies in Scotland at the Kilmarnock Daily School and the Glasgow Public Health Laboratory, where he was awarded the national diploma of dairying. Mr Tennent went to Dunedin in 1920 to fill the position of instructor in agriculture to the Otago Education Board, and was afterwards appointed instructor for Otago in the fields division. When the Fields Division was reorganized he became fields superintendent for Otago and Southland, with full control of the division’s experimental and instructional activities in both provinces. Mr Tennent has a wide knowledge of farming methods practised in many countries, which should prove of great assistance to him in his new position.

In 1925 he was sent by the New Zealand Government to study irrigation methods in the United States, and irrigation farming in New Zealand has been largely based on the observations which he made in California. His special knowledge in this sphere led to his appointment as a member of the Government Irrigation Committee of 1928, which classified irrigation settlements in Central Otago and adjusted water rentals and charges throughout the whole district.

Mr Tennent was recently appointed a member of the Taieri River Trust, and his other activities have included membership of the executives of the Otago Provincial Council of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union and the Otago Agricultural and Pastoral Society.