COULD FARM ROCKS.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17613, 18 January 1929, Page 6

COULD FARM ROCKS.

but would it pay? MINISTER ON LAND SETTLEMENT. POPULATION AND PRODUCTION. GOVERNMENT’S TWO AIMS. “We can make even rocks grow something if we are prepared to spend enough money on them,” declared Hon. G. W. Forbes, Minister of Lands, in conversation with a Times reporter this morning. The Minister arrived at Frankton by the Limited, and left immediately for the King Country. The Minister’s remark was in answer to a query as to what policy the Government intended to pursue with regard to the Taupo lands. Mr Forbes stated that he had not yet considered the Taupo proposition. He intended shortly to make an inspection of that district. He had heard various statements regarding it, some detrimental and some praising its possibilities. The economic question would have to be thoroughly analysed before anything was done in the matter. The initial outlay of bringing a large area of land remote from the ordinary avenues of trade, into cultivation might be so prohibitive as to render such a scheme economically unsound. “There would be no sense in spending £3 to produce £i,” added the Minister. “It is possible to make any land productive if we are prepared to spend enough money on it. Tire question is whether it will pay, not altogether in the narrow sense of producing an actual profit to the Government, but in the broader sense of becoming a national asset when peopled.” “We can,” proceeded Mr Forbes, “place men on the land and merely increase the population and the national burden. Our aim, however, is to not only increase the population on the land, but to increase production. These two things must run together in any scheme which the Government undertakes.” The Minister added that Cabinet yesterday discussed several important land proposals which were approaching the stage of finalisation. He mentioned also that he was calling an early conference of Crown Land Commissioners to discuss the whole question of lands available for settlement, their values, and best methods of dealing with them. This should go a long way towards solving the problems which at present confronted the Government in regard to land settlement. To-day the Minister will visit the Ngaroma settlement, where, ho says, the settlers complain, no Minister has ever paid them a visit. He will then go on to Te Kuiti and later to Kawhia. He will arrive in Hamilton to-morrow night and will proceed to Auckland on Sunday.