OUR STAPLE INDUSTRIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 22, 20 July 1911, Page 3

OUR STAPLE INDUSTRIES.

RURAL NEW ZEALAND UNDER | REVIEW. ' No. 3!). ' (By B. J. EAMES). THE GLAD DOMINION. TEN MILLION PEOPLE NEEDED. Last week's article completed the present writer's review of New Zealand rural industries. Practically the whole of the Inhabited country from away north of Auckland down to the Bluff has been covered. The advance of winter, the isolation of the western district, and the unfitness of the roads for wet travelling by motor, made a visit to Westland impracticable. It may be said, however, that in common with all New Zealand, Westland still offers an immense field for pioneering, for there is still much forest to be redeemed. If I were to be asked my outstanding rural impression of this extended tour of the Dominion, I would unhesitatingly reply: "New Zealand needs ten million people." Let us take a vignette view of the provinces in the order in which they were dealt with.

TARANAKI. ! Remarkable as the increase of Taranaki's output of butter and cheese has been, there is every reason to believe that the figures of 10 years' hence will throw the present records into insignificance. There are still many thousands of acres to be made available for the w>w. Even in the very heart of the district—in the little strip of country which produces more butter-fat- than any similar area in New Zealand—there is a surprisingly large acreage not devoted ■to butter-fat production. But more important still the worK of the recentlycreated testing associations has shown the enormous number of cows there are which are not yielding anything like the quantity they should, and it is obvious that by gradually replacing the proved scrubbers there will be a huge increase ;n the quantity of produce without the consumption of an extra blade of grass. Even in the most densely populated parts there is room for double the number of people; in the hinterland there is room for thousands more. With the advance in land values farming is reducing itself to a much closer scale. From 500 acres the holdings have been cut up into 400, 300. 200 and 100-acre farms, and it is pretty safe to say that within a couple of decades farms of 60 acres and under will be far and away the most numerous. What this will mean in population increase cannot be estimated.

, AUCKLAND. I This 19 the great area of the untouched core. Its bright north is an unrealised field of potential expansion. Even the poorest of its gum lands can be used for fruit-growing—much of it used exceedingly well. It has valleys innumerable and plain and rolling lands unmeasured which could support with ease, say, twenty times the number of people occupying them now. After all, only the most fertile and most easily accessible land has been settled, and of these old-established centres of agriculture there are none, roughly speaking, which have been populated to their fullest comfortable capacity. What was said of Taranaki's cows applies to Auckland's and, indeed, to all New Zealand, so that that source of increased production need not be repeated. Its unscratchcd core, its vast area of native lands, .and its big holdings capable of subdivision, suggest unlimited possibilities.

HAWKES BAY. Here is a country of large ownerships, a province of vested interests which the process of time is bound to reclaim, for the people. Irrigation and the plough have taught the lesson that big stations are wasteful from an economic point of view; that extensive sheep-walks are not the handmaids of national progress lhere are constantly being opened up new avenues of productivity, but Hawke's Bay has not got a tithe of the people it ought to possess. WELLINGTON. Even along the main line which runs northwards through the old-settled valley of the Wairarapa there are at this late day evidences by the wayside that axes must yet be employed busily to clear the homesteads of the settler. There are many farms which are almost as far distant from their fullest producing capacity as ever they were—farma that have yet to be felled and stumped. ■ There are forest lands; there are more big holdings. There are roads after roads along which one may travel and marvel at the emptiness of the country. It calls, for settlement, settlement. i NELSON AND MARLBOROUGH. Just a little bit of country in the whole I of Nelson province is really settled. Eve* between Nelson itself and the fruit area I of Motueka there are miles of untouched desolateness—land which only needs the application of brain and muscle to make it productive. Througli its valleys and dotted round its bays there are townships but they shrink from conscious consideration when the untouched tracts of bush land and forest are viewed In Marlborough, on a little plain of 65 000 acres, there are about 14,000 peoplethere are fewer than 14,000-people in all f, e „, r i of Marlborough land district, on 2,703,000 acres of land! The country is crying for settlement. CANTERBURY.

The province is settled in the sense that practically all the useful land is taken up, but there are 3,301,170 acres under pastoral licenses, held by 128 persons—an average of 26,493 acres each! There is room for settlement. OTAGO AND SOUTHLAND.

We have seen that the South is the greatest oat-producing part of the South Island, but there are still big areas of land to come- under, the plough. In central Otago the remarkable, results achieved under irrigation show that a comprehensive scheme would impart ex traordinary possibilities to a vast inlant area. In horse-breeding, dairying, fruitgrowing, sheep-ifarming, and in the growth of crops other than oats there is ample elbow room. Throughout New Zealand there are periodical complaints of the over-run-ning blackberry, of the rabbit pest, of the Californian thistle. There seems to be only one remedy—closer settlement! Yes, it is a glad jjominion. But it needs ten million people!