Overseas Young Farmers Visit N.Z. On Exchange

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28267, 3 May 1957, Page 11

Overseas Young Farmers Visit N.Z. On Exchange

Two young farmers, one from Australia and the other from England, are at present visiting Canterbury in the course of exchange visits arranged by the New Zealand Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs. Interviewed in Christchurch, they compared farming practices and conditions in their own countries and those in New Zealand.

Mr Ivan Halbert, a 22-year-old Western Australian, who works on his father’s 6400-acre wheat and sheep property, 100 miles east of Perth, is staying this week with the family of Mr W. C. Miller, at Motukarara. Theirs is a 600-acre town milk supply farm, with some cropping.

Asked what benefit a wheat and sheep man expected to gain from staying 10 days of his three months in New Zealand on a Canterbury town milk supply property, Mr Halbert said: “The idea is to broaden our outlook—to learn how other people live, and what their problems are.” He had found, said Mr Halbert, that living conditions in Southed, Central Otago, and now Canterbury were very little different from those in Gunderdin, Western Australia, his nearest centre. Ten days was usually enough to obtain answers to all the ques-

tions he put, but he sometimes wondered if the New Zealanders’ questions of him were answered to their satisfaction.

Mr Halbert will go next to Marlborough. Grassland Management Mr George Walton, who comes from a 500-acre mixed farm in South Warwickshire, has taken a particular interest in grassland management and has been impressed with the great use made in New Zealand of clover to provide nitrogen. Much greater use

was made of clover in New Zealand than in England, where farmers relied more on artificial nitrogen, he said. He also noticed differences in sheep farming, such as pre-lamb shearing and crutching, neither of which were practicable in England because of the extreme climate. Crutching was not necessary as a rule, because with more manpower available better supervision was possible at home and sheep were usually only lightly woolled.

Young farmers’ activities were organised along similar lines to the clubs in New Zealand, said Mr Walton. Public speaking played a big part in the club life and was considered important, as many of the old farmers were rather inarticulate in expressing themselves, but debating, a prominent activity in New Zealand clubs, was not as widely practised.

During his stay in New Zealand Mr Walton has been living and working with farmers in many parts of the country. He has already been to the North Island and has visited Takaka in the South Island. He will be in New Zealand for four months and a half, and after his stay in Canterbury he will go to the North Island.