MASSEY COLLEGE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5603, 9 April 1943, Page 5

MASSEY COLLEGE

FINE INSTITUTION INTERESTING VISIT The following is from “Straight Furrow” of March 15: — An invitation to visit Massey College was extended to Auckland Executive members of the Farmers’ Union, who went to the last Dominion Executive meeting, and was accepted. There was complete agreement that exceptionally good work is being done at “Massey” and that farmers know far too little about either that work, or the opportunities on offer to themselves and their children.

Mr G. Grey Campbell, newly appointed Chairman of the Board of Governors of Massey Agricultural College, with Dr. D. Robb, addressed Auckland'Executive a couple* of meetings ago, on the subject of the College. Before last meeting, Mr Campbell invited Union delegates to Wellington F.U. Executive to call and see the work being done at the appointments there, and to get a general picture of the advantages that “Massey” is ready to place at the disposal of farming.

This invitation was accepted. The visit was made, enjoyed, and all who attended confessed to very considerable enlightenment.

Professor Peren, the Principal (these gentlemen will have to excuse absence of the string of lexers they are entitled to, but which most farmers would skip) was unfortunately away, as were many other professors. Most of the staff is engaged militarily, indeed about half of those members whom the visitors saw were in uniform; “Massey” evidently believes in doing its bit. Space forbids even a brief account of the visit. Quickly passing from ~s-rooms to laboratories, to libraries—looking quite extensive as city libraries though filled principally with books relating to agriculture; to workrooms, then to sheds used in wool sorting, carpentry, post making; to an ampitheatre, with gallery, close to the abbatoir, where demonstrations are staged, cattle being tied to stakes: to piggeries; to plots in which seed strains are developed, manorial trials made; to fields in which mole draining tests of an extensive nature are in progress; to “dehydration” experiments (these under the Department of Scientific Research) —in fact tearing about in cars from place to place and seeing only the fraction of what there is to s6e, was really bewildering. This article has another purpose than to describe the visit. Massey College could be ten times as big, with ten times the staff, and waste its sweetness on the Palmerston air, if nobody availed himself of the courses held there. It isn’t as bad as that, not by a long way, but is is a fact that Auckland farmers are not yet alive to all that “Massey” can do for them. „ There is a type of farmer who decries “theory.” Up, to a point, “Massey” agrees that practice must even precede theory. Boys who have not worked on a farm have to put in time at practical farm work, elsewhere or at “Massey,” before they can profit bv class work. Farmers will say it took them forty or fifty years to learn what they know. But should it take a lifetime for their boys to learn what they know? And do they know all there is to know now? Aren’t there

any short cuts to knowledge gained by experience ? There are short-cuts, and agricultural colleges provide some, just as a farmer can help his own boys by tips. No, not “just,” for many modern boys think they know much more than their fathers, but come to earth when with other boys and under efficient tuition.

Extremely reasonable though training at “Massey” is, many men on farms could not raise the money, nor spare the labour of their boys, to give their sons tuition there. This is regrettable,. but as the accommodation is at present limited, quite enough financial fathers have sons who will benefit to take up all that accommodation. Professor W. Ridet, who was with the F.U. visitors all day, “takes” dairying. If any boy does not get on with Professor Ridet, it is the boy’s fault. The College not only has dairy farms, it has a dairy factory. A boy will get the experience that he might not get on a dozen farms, wellrun, with different breeds of cows.

Another gentleman met was Mr W. A. Jacques, who is in charge of the soil side of education; Mr Morton has the sheep section (Field Husbandry and Sheep Management are under Professor Peren’s own supervision) and Mr E. Bruce Levy, known by name at least to most farmers, head of the Grassland Division, Plant Research Bureau, is an honorary lecturer in Agrostology, and knows more about grasses than any other .man in New Zealand. Much more could be said, indeed it is hardly fair to other teachers to leave out their many names, but space compels us to advise reference to the College Handbook (called, for erudite reasons, the “Calendar”). Readers will find a long string of names in the Calendar.

So far as farmers’ sons are concerned, there is a choice of courses that end in degrees, or a shorter period of study that will fit a man to understand what he is doing and why, and, as far as possible, what to do in given circumstances. The writer does not wish any farmer to take his word that the College will be good for a youth or young man who is devoting his life to farming. Though convinced of this, he would' have farmers form ther own opinions. There is, nevertheless, too much of the idea.abroad that any man can farm. Vastly more is to he learned concerning farming than concerning almost any so-called profession. For instance, the necessary ground work for farm accounting taught at “Massey” is far short of all that a professional accountant must know, so is the carpentering less than a good carpenter knows, but all the trades in which the farmer needs some instruction are not concerned with farming, though farming is concerned with them. “Massey” knows that there is no end to the knowledge that is useful on the land. “Massey” will help a lad to hold his head up, to be proud of what is Really the most honourable trade in the world. “Massey” also recognises that an Economic system that weighs heavily on the basic industry of the Dominion is unwise, and injures those with occupations at the most distant removes from farming, as well as farmers. While interested in farming as a way of life, it is not ignoring the necessity of farming providing a good livelihood.