YOUNG FARMERS

Southland Times, Issue 22770, 21 December 1935, Page 14

YOUNG FARMERS

BOYS’-AND GIRLS’ CLUB MOVEMENT

TIME RIPE FOR FORWARD DRIVE

A yield of potatoes at the rate of 46 tons an acre has won for a Southland schoolboy the award this year of the Stuart Wilson Cup, which goes to the girl or boy returning the most meritorious performance in the yearly competitions of the Boys’ and Girls’ Agricultural Clubs, which Mr Wilson was instrumental in starting in New Zealand seventeen years ago. Runner-up this year is a Taranaki boy, whose yield of mangolds worked out at 179.? tons an acre. These yields were obtained from small plots thoroughly worked and carefully nursed. To give the same care to a ten-acre paddock, for example, would take a great deal more labour than the average farmer has available; but, in view of the yield secured by the schoolchildren, not more labour than would be jusitfied by the produce returned. In other words, the competition results show what is possible by intensive cultivation. They show far more than that: How the competitive spirit, which is natural to every one of us, can be harnessed to stimulate farm children’s interest in practical farming; how interest so stimulated can spread knowledge (for almost every year the cup has been won by a better yield than in earlier years); and how the child, in addition to being father to the man, may sometibes be mentor to hise own father (for club organizers can give instance after instance in which the enthusiasm of the children has spread to their parents, and the lessons learnt in the children’s plots have been applied to their parents’ farms).

There were approximately 1500 entered in this year’s competition, but children from many more than 1500 homes are attending the primary schools of the Dominion, and wellwishers of the Boys’ end Girls’ Club movement will not be satisfied until at least half of these farm homes are represented in the annual competitions, comments the Dominion editorially. It is significant that, although the movement is now represented in almost every district of the country, it is strongest by far in Taranaki: significant I because in that province it has the support not only of Education Board offi- ' cers but also of specially-constituted overseeing organizations of farmers. Admittedly Taranaki, with its small holdings, is more favourable to the organization and growth of clubs than, for instance, a purely sheepfarming district would be. But allowing for these differences in type of farming and density of settlement, there is no reason why what has been done in Taranaki should not be done in every province. It is primarily a matter of initative and of wise direction. Both the Department of Agriculture and the Education Department are associated with the movement, and in more prosperous times the Government helped with an annual Errant. The time is ripe for a forward drive, and the restoration of the grant would be a heartening acknowledgement of the splendid work being done for the clubs by officers of the two departments (including school teachers) and by sympathetic farmers. No doubt the new Minister of Agriculture, Mr Lee Martin, will have many more pressing and more costly requests for aid: but there can be few, if any. which hold out richer prospect of return in fuller and hannier lives as well as in material wealth.