A DILATORY DEPARTMENT.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 820, 18 May 1910, Page 8

A DILATORY DEPARTMENT.

BEPOBT SIX MONTHS IN THE PRESS. At the end of March each year the heads of the various divisions of the Department of Agriculture set about the preparation cf their reports on the season that is then drawing to a close. In them is set forth the record of the year and its lessons for tho man on tbn land. Much, valuable information is ■ got together and printed at great expense to show how the mistakes of the past may bo avoided, and the quantity and quality of the Dominion's products improveu. The winter is the farmer's slack time, and in the long evenings there, would lie ample time to. read and digest the advice of thu Government experts. It is reasonable to conclude that every effort would be made by an up-to-date department to get the report into the hauds of the farmers as soon as the winter begins to close down on us. Yet what is the position? tinder date of "Wellington, New Zealand, April, 1909," tho Secretary for Agriculture last year wrote to the Minister: "I have tho honour to submit the report of the Department for tbe year Bnding March 31, 1909." The advance copies of this report were submitted to Parliament ou October 12 last, some six and a half months later, and it was probably well on towards the end of the year before the bulk of the issue was in circulation. In. 1908 the report was available six days earlier, October 5. This ei-•h-aofdinary-' delay means that the value if much of what was written in March and April has quite evaporated, and the recommendations of the oxperts and the results of the experiments on the costly farms kept up by the State cannot in the majority of. cases bo made use of until the nest succeeding season, if at all. . No monthly journal is published by our Department of Agriculture, as is done in most oilier coanlrios, and the experts of the Department are forbidden under sc-' vere pains and penalties to make use of the newspapers to advise farmers in any respect. Everything apparently is to be preserved for theannual report. At considerable expense, for instance, the Government sends Mr.- Hallam, orchard inspector at Niilson, across to Tasmania to gather information that will be of use to the fruit-growers of Nelson in making their first-shipment of apples to London. Jlr. Hallam returns and the Nelson newspapers hasten to obtain from him suggestions for the orchardiste about to pack their apples for shipment. Mr. Hallam, however, is absolutely forbidden to give the growers any information whatever through the press, and not until the local member of Parliament , gets the telegraph work is tho embargo removed • for the time being. .' Here is a Department established mainly to advise and enlighten the farmers. After.getting an expensive collection of experts together it has spoiled the ship for a pennyworth.'of tar in the shape of a journal in which the advice of the experts could be put at tho disposal of the farming community at short intervals. Every Department of Agriculture of any note abroad has its monthly journal. Our Department, besides- doing trithout a journal, goes one better and '■■ threatens these experts with dismissal who talk to farmers per medium of the daily press. Finally, on tho one occasion on which the farmers' advisers are al-' lowed to appear in print, 1 an interval of• six or seven months is allowed to elapse, between the time the annual reports leave their hands and when they see the light-, of day in Parliament.