Increasing Farm Production

Southland Times, Issue 24001, 16 December 1939, Page 6

Increasing Farm Production

npHE facts and figures quoted on L Thursday by the Minister of Labour after an inspection of country districts in Southland encourage the belief that useful work will be done by men now being drafted from Scheme 13 and by the land-clearing machines of the Public Works Department. At present, said Mr Webb, more than 4000 men are employed under Scheme 4B throughout New Zealand, “and I hope by next winter to have 10,000 transferred to clearing and developing private land.” It is a long time since the Government began to speak of drafting Public Works employees to productive occupations, and most farmers‘will welcome the signs of a practical activity. Draining and clearing cannot provide an immediate rise in production; but they increase the potential acreage and they relieve the farmer from slow and laborious tasks which prevent him from giving a full attention to his essential work. It should not be forgotten, however, that the farmer’s greatest need in war time is an adequate amount of skilled labour. There . can be small satisfaction in an improvement in the equity of property i£ there is difficulty in carrying out the seasonal routine on land that has been cleared for many years.

The work of greatest importance at this stage is not so much the extension of acreage as the fqllest development of the land which is already available and which, in too many cases, is no longer yielding its measure of production. Long-range planning does not have to be abandoned in war time; but it should not be regarded as a substitute for short-term requirements. Although machines may do in a year more than a farmer can do in a life-time they merely clear the way for work which requires men with skill and experience. The Government’s scheme will be valuable only if it is part of a larger scheme which includes the cutting down of costs and a serious attempt to remove the labour shortage where it is felt most severely—in the cow byre and behind the plough. Until there is more tangible evidence that the root problems are being faced constructively, and with a sense of war-time urgency, the farmers may be slow to show enthusiasm for plans which promise much for the future, but little for the difficult times now being faced in the country districts.