AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 December 1927, Page 8

AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS.

The recommendation of the Board of Agriculture that the State Experimental Fann at Weraroa should be sold, and the proceeds applied to experimental work elsewhere will merit the serious consideration of the Cabinet. When the State Farm was instituted the concentration of experimental work in a State-owned farm was necessary, and during its existence the Weraroa ■ institution has been of considerable service. Its value has been limited by the nature and area of the farm, but it has, on the whole, justified its existence. With the establishment of the Massey Agncul- : tural College at Palmerston North, however, the need for a State farm within a few miles of the new institution has practically ceased to exist, though it may take some little time to bring experiments now under way at Weraroa to a conclusion. Further, experience has shown during later years that experiments carried out on private farms and by farmers themselves, under the supervision of the expert officers of the Department of Agriculture, are of more benefit to a district than centralised research at a State farm often many miles away. In Taranaki local experiments have been found of much service to the dairy industry. They have awakened interest and the fact that they are carried out by farmers themselves makes it easier to popularise the application oi the lessons derived from them by other farmers in a district. For higher research work centralised effort is still necessary, and this, it is presumed, will be the main function of the new college at Palmerston North. Local experiments have the further advantage of sparing the State the heavy expense of keeping up an experimental farm, while their results from a financial point of view, as well as from that of husbandry, are based upon methods and appliances within the reach of any farmer. There is need for considerable increase in the number of local experiments and if the sale. of the Weraroa State Farm makes possible the development of these the disappearance of that institution should in no way lessen the benefits to the primary industries which experimental research alone can give.