YOUNG FARMERS’ CLUBS

Southland Times, Issue 23374, 4 December 1937, Page 19

YOUNG FARMERS’ CLUBS

GROWTH IN GREAT BRITAIN YOUTH GOES BACK TO LAND Membership of young farmers’ clubs in Great Britain has made a record increase of 25 per cent, in the year ended September 30. It now exceeds 7500, and the number of clubs in England and Wales has grown from 250 to 320 states The Sunday Times. . These clubs are associations of boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 21, banded together to care for calves, pigs, sheep, poultry, rabbits, bees, or farm and garden crops. Each club is selfsupporting, but they are organized into a National Federation, which is maintained principally by grants from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees, and King George's Jubilee Trust. A new source of support will be revealed shortly when the annual meeting of the federation is held in London with the Duke of Norfolk presiding. More than 25 county councils have granted votes in response to an appeal made to them last year by Mr Walter Elliot in his last speech as Minister of Agriculture. Mr W. S. Morrison, his successor at the ministry, is to attend the annual meeting, and he will no doubt renew that appeal to the other county authorities who have not yet realized the enormous importance of the clubs in awakening a love of farming pursuits and particularly of live stock. MEMBERSHIP OF CLUBS The average membership of the English and Welsh clubs is 25, in the proportion of two boys to one girl. They have to provide their own officers, conduct business and keep accounts. In the early stages they have the guidance of a club leader, and each also has its adult advisory committee, composed mainly of local farmers, who assist in the purchase and sale of stock. Almost every branch of live stock farming is included in the various clubs’ activities, though each is encouraged to specialize, so that the interests of members may not become too diversified and so weaken the common link. The first of the clubs were concerned with calf rearing, and successes at many hundreds of shows and sales in the past 16 years have won a reputation which brings keen bidding for animals sent from the clubs. Ninetyone calves at the recent annual sale of the Lancashire clubs averaged no less than £l2 8/-. There is even one Young Farmers’ Club in the metropolitan area, at Goodmayes, near Ilford. It has been flourishing for five years, and its enterprising youthful founder has just become engaged to marry the treasurer. Mainly because of administrative difficulties in connection with the Ministry’s grant the federation has not been able to include Scotland in its activities. But the movement is growing there rapidly, particularly in the Border counties and in the North-East, and within the next two or three weeks a federation for Scotland will probably have been formed.