FUTURE OF FARMING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 71, Issue 195, 18 August 1928, Page 22 (Supplement)

FUTURE OF FARMING

EXCELLENT PROSPECTS LABOUR AND THE LAND. With the stabilising once more of the overseas markets for New Zealand farm produce, and the excellent prices obtainable there is every inducement for a land policy which will absorb the surplus labour we have in the country and utilise much of the territory which now lies idle and worse than useless, states the New Zealand Herald.

Some of our political leaders appear to be afraid of competition from other countries flooding the British markets with butter and cheese, or with mutton, lamb and pork, and arc beginning to talk as if there w r as a serious danger of our supply in these products, but there need be no fear that any increase in farm production likely to accrue from increased settlement in this country will affect our chief market or any other market. As for competition, this ■ has always been in evidence and for the last twenty years or more we have been continually bombarded with reports that Argentina was going to beat us out of the field with its lamb and mutton and that Siberia would rival us in butter and other dairy produce. It is not to be denied that Argentina and Siberia, and other countries too, will persist in fighting us on business lines for the sale of food products, but since they have been doing the same thing for so long without any serious results we can be assured that the advantages we possess in climate and in human skill will stand for us in the future as they have done in the past. Several factors. There are several factors which may be considered when dealing with the demand for food products. In the matter of butter and cheese for instance climatic conditions are so favourable in New Zealand that few countries in the world have any chance of competing with us on the lines of either cheapness or quality and further, the consumption of these products is increasing steadily. This increase is due to at least two causes, the increase of population in various overseas countries and in the increased use of these products per head of population. In Great Britain the population is steadily, if slowly, increasing, while statisticians assert also that the rate of consumption per head of butter has gone up until it is more than two pounds per head above the average of a few years ago. Two pounds per head increase may not seem much but it makes a total of over 92,000,0001 b. per year, and the average of consumption is still lower than it is in several other countries.

It is noticeable <mce more that Germany is again becoming an important customer for Siberian and European dairy produce, and that America is yearly increasing its demands for tin* products of Argentina and Canada. All these facts go to show that New Zealand has no cause to fear any diminution of its overseas markets, nor does there appear to be any reason why the prices for all its farm products shoflld not be maintained at their present very satisfactory level for many years to come. If this be the case, then there should be every reason for the people of this dominion to stimulate new settlement and production by every means in their power. Problem of Capital. It is not to be assumed that any person can buy high priced land on borrow’pd money and make a success of tilling it. nor is it to be supposed that a man with insufficient capital can undertake the work of breaking in virgin land and earn profitable results, but there are plenty of improved and partly improved farms for sale at the present time, which can be secured at a reasonable price, and men with a

moderate amount of ready capital can do well on such farms.

The problem of settling men with little or no capital on new or virgin land is not an easy one to solve, but The advantage to the State of turning human labour and idle land to productive use is so great and so imperative that every effort should be made to solvo this problem. After all, it is not a very obtrusse one. It resolves itself largely into the simple yet very important necessity of providing capital so that the, individual settler can improve his holding up to the productive stage, or the State undertaking the improvement of idle Crown lands and offering holdings to selected settlers when these holdings are capable of yielding a suffi-

cient return to keep a man and his family in simple comfort. There are, today, millions of acres of land lying idle and there are thousands of men willing to work it and make it productive, but is the State ready to assist in finding the means to give the worker a fair chance to improve the land?