GREATER PRODUCTION

Taranaki Daily News, 21 August 1930, Page 13

GREATER PRODUCTION

TARANAKI IN GOOD POSITION BROAD ACRES SOUND SECURITY. ADVICE TO THE MONEY LENDERS. Commenting on the fact that although New Zealand as a whole had recently been passing through a period of financial stringency Taranaki had weathered, the storm probably more successfully than any other part of the Dominion, the president of the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce (Mr. J. McLeod) emphasised at the annual meeting of the Chamber last night that the broad acres of Taranaki were sound security for investors, and he advised money' lenders and lending institutions not to be afraid of financing on farms as security. . , , ‘‘Although the Dominion has passed through a comparatively quiet trading period,” said Mr. McLeod, ‘it has been the good fortune of Taranaki to have been adversely affected to a lesser extent than probably any other part of the Dominion. Compensation for the fall in values has been provided by the increased production to an extent that enabled the proceeds of the Taranaki factories to almost equal those of the preceding satisfactory year. The art of herd-testing and consequent culling is more and more being successfully practised in this province. Coupled the widespread improvement of pastures by systematic top-dressing, the gradual bringing to producing capacity of heretofore only partly improved areas at the back of most dairying farms is assuredly adding permanently to the wealth of .the province. “The limit of Taranaki’s producing capacity even on farm's of the present acreage in the older settled districts is very far from being reached yet, for few indeed arc the farms that do not possess a few acres in the rough yet to be brought into pasture. Coupled with the collateral security of an intelligent hard-working farmer, there is no better avenue for financial lending institutions and lenders generally to invest their funds than on the broad acres of Taranaki. The type of financial adviser of whom we occasionally read deprecating investment on farm mortgage is surely the species of patriot who at one time in history received short shrift. It is almost safe to say now that that process of land value deflation in Taranaki which 'perforce had to follow the inflation of the war period, has been completed, and that the price Of farm lands to-day is based on a level of reasonable producing capacity.”