The Waipa post. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, MAY 27, 1913. EXPERIMENTAL FARMS.

Waipa Post, Volume V, Issue 215, 27 May 1913, Page 2

The Waipa post. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, MAY 27, 1913. EXPERIMENTAL FARMS.

FOR many years the establishment of State Experimental Farms was regarded by a very large proportion of agriculturalists as being of little or no value to agricultural interests. The expressed opinion of some went so far as to assert that to attempt to farm under such conditions was merely to provide a neverending channel for expenditure from the public purse. Any such opinion was undoubtedly the result of a lack of a proper appreciation of the value or aims of any scientific and experimental work connected with agriculture, and it is gratifying to hear, now that these farms have given very practical demonstration of their utility and good purpose, farmers speaking of these farms in such a manner as to clearly indicate that experimental stations are regarded as valuable assets to the Dominion. The development of New Zealand is not entiiely resultant upon the advancement of any particular locality, nor does it centre in the throwing open for settlement the back blocks, disregardless of the advancement of agriculture —and all that the word contains. The settlement of waste lands is essential to national progress, but a determining factor in the Dominion’s future is the spreading of such knowledge as will lead to farming — not merely to drain all the natural wealth from the soil, but, by the adoption of scientific methods, bring about the highest result consistent with the proper protection of the soil’s natural qualities The true objective of agricultural experimental stations is therefore not to aim at a direct financial gain, but to serve as a much more valuable meansof making known to farmers information which is so very necessary to the more speedy and ' thorough development of the Dominion’s agricultural resources. That these experimental stations have necessitated a very considerable outlay is certain, but when their value to the country is considered it must be readily admitted that the Government has been fully justified in bringing about their establishment. That “ agriculture is ever young ” is as much a truism

to-day as it has been down

through the past centuries. The farmer, working with nature and

against nature, has much to j learn, and it is only right and proper that the State should come i forward and give every facility ; to those engaged in our staple I industry to adopt such methods , as will promote agricultural in- j terests. In an address on Ameri-1 can experimental stations Dr 11. j C. White is reported in the Agri- | cultural Journal to fittingly com-' ment upon the value of scientific : agricultural experiments in the ; following terms : “ A scientific laboratory in the j fullest and purest sense, given j over to varied, but purely scienti- j lie work, with fields and barns 1 and herds ranking with micro- j scope, balance, and burette as;

mere implements of research, it is experimental only so far as it may test, on a strictly laboratory scale, the suggestions of research. It is the investigative department of the college to which it may be attached, and, as such, may be j called upon only to furnish new j truths to be taught in the class- j room and the laboratory, in the j extension lecture, and on the j demonstration farm. With this | distinctive and restrictive pur-1 pose the field of its operation j is yet ample and sufficient, j The acquisition of knowledge j must precede its application, j and further real progress in agri- j culture must, therefore, come not

so much from improved instruction in the schools, from increase in our extension teaching, or

from demonstration in the field, valuable and important as these may be, but mainly from research in the station laboratory. And yet a greater service may the station render to the State. Among all the public institutions, it should stand pre-eminently to illustrate the persistent, untiring search for truth. For it is the search after truth that is the basis of moral training, and it is the profession of truth that alone shall make us free.”