LAND MEN’S TROUBLES

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6442, 24 January 1924, Page 8

LAND MEN’S TROUBLES

/ AMERICAN FARMERS DECLARED INEXPERT ' _ _! ..LACK OF UP-TO-Date METHODS Apparently the farming community in New Zealand is not alone in its difficulties in making a success of the calling, for conditions in America have led to a controversy that has been taken up throughout the length and breadth of the United States. A Te Awamutu resident received by the latest American mail a chatty letter from a friend in California, who refers incidentally to the position. We have been permitted to make the following extracts: — •. Much of the financial distress from which farmers in this country have suffered in the past two or three years is believed by some of the Government experts at Washington to be due to a lack of scientific management of farms. The obvious, answer to such a statement would be that Government experts sitting behind mahogany desks at the national capital are not entitled to criticise, the farmer working from sunrise to sunset in the fields. The retort of the Government expert to that is that if the farmer will try the scientific methods prescribed he will not have to work so hard and will get more for his abour. The farmer is necessarily a skilful man. The shoemaker has only to know how to make shoes, but the farmer must have a vast variety of lore about seed, soil,, cultivation and weather. The Government specialists admit that the farmer is a wise man, but say that he often fails to organise his wisdom properly. Many counties throughout the country now have agents who are half-Federal and half-State employees. In many sections these agents have not been popular. The farmers have declared that they have been tilling their acres for years as their fathers before them did; therefore, how can an upstart Government expert from the agricultural college teach them anything? . • That is just the trouble, the experts say. The farmers have been following in the footsteps of their fathers for too many years. The old methods were good when they were introduced, but the land changes with cultivation, generation after generation, and requires new and improved ways.