Farmers as Speculators.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8290, 3 November 1905, Page 7

Farmers as Speculators.

A writer under the non deplume of " Cooperator" deals in the Auckland Herald with a subject which has an immense influence on the agricultural industry of this country, namely, the tendency of that class known as a small producer to look for his profits rather to the selling of his farm than to the working of it. No doubt the great advance in land values and the love of the average colonial for change very largely account for the fact that the bulk of bur small farms are nearly always in the market; but no thoughtful man can fail to recognise that this state of things is highly undesirable. When a large proportion of settlers in any district look to the buying and selling of land as a means of making money, it is very bad for those who depend for their living on the raising and selling of farm produce. If the whole of the settlers iv any district definitely knew that they had to depend for their living on the sale of farm produce they would certainly begin right away to provide for themselves some permanent and satisfactory method of marketing this produce. They would also see that it was worth their while to exert themselves, or even to spend money in providing decent roads or other methods of communication with their markets. The man who buys a farm simply with the idea that some day someone will come along and offer him more than he gave for it, is not going to trouble himself much about markets or production, and he certainly will strongly object to any increase of. rating in order to give advantages only to those who produce or carry produce. It is somewhat strange that we should call this class of people settlers, for they are decidedly unsettled in their habits, and do almost as much harm to a district as the man who makes bad butter or sows weedy grass. The success of agriculture depends upon those people who look upon agriculture as a life occupation, who use land in order to make it yield its increase, who realise that the very methods of proper farming depend upon permanency of objective.. The huckster in land, the petty pedlar in land will not spend money or labour in undertakings, except for immediate profit; he looks upon land as he looks upon mining scrip, or a line of drapery—just as something to sell when it will put money into his pockets. The legitimate farmer is just as much interested in putting down the profits of these land jobbers as he is in lowering the profits of the middleman who distributes his produce. And the sooner the farmer realises this the sooner he is likely to settle down to those practical and permanent undertakings which alone can make farming steadily profitable.