AS OTHERS SEE US.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 February 1933, Page 6

AS OTHERS SEE US.

The farewell message of the party of Victorian farmers who completed a tour of New Zealand on Monday last was something more than grateful courtesy. It is satisfactory to know that the visitors enjoyed their holiday, and that they found matters of common interest between primary production here and in the State of Victoria. But the point in the party’s acknowledgment of hospitality received which deserves the widest publicity was that the Australian farmers thought ‘‘New Zealand has only touched the fringe of its primary producing potentialities,” Such a statement, coming from those who can be considered qualified to judge, should be an antidote to much that is pessimistic in regard to the future of the Dominion. Some members of the Victorian party had come from a district which a generation ago • appeared to have lost all chance of progress. Its former prosperity had depended upon gold-mining, and with the mines worked out the decay of the settlements which had grown up around them seemed inevitable!. But by the aid of expert advice, a generous land policy on the part of the Government and the determination of the settlers the erstwhile deserted mining areas have become farm lands and the future of the districts is bright. Moreover, the recovery has been made in a country where droughts are always a possibility and where pasture management as well as cropping have difficulties which farmers in New Zealand can scarcely realise. To settlers who have overcome these setbacks the conditions which obtain in the Dominion seem encouraging indeed, and it is no wonder they consider that only the fringe of production has been reached. There is still ample room for enterprise in New Zealand and in no way more than in regard to primary production.