"INDIFFERENT FARMING."

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1189, 26 July 1911, Page 10

"INDIFFERENT FARMING."

HOW -THE -DOMINION LOPES. EDUCATION AND AGRICULTURE. "Wo cannot shut our eyes to the fact that there is a great deal of indifferent farming in New Zeal.-.nd. rte have some farms which are a credit to any country, and some farmers who by I heir energy and enterprise, while treating the land with intelligence, will set the iitmct produce out of it; but tho general average of our funning leaves much room for improvement." Such was the comment of Mr. J. &. Wilson, president of the Farmers' Union, duriiiK the course of a speech at yesterday's conference. Mr. Wilson proceeded to t[iioto what he (ormed n notable address by Mr. C. C. James, Deputy-Minister for Agriculture, Ontario, who holds much the same position as a Secretary of Agriculture in Now Zealand. In an address on "Tho Problem of the Indifferent Farmer," Mr. James said:—"lf by some magic or process of regeneration we could turn all the indifferent farmers into wideawake, progressive, up-to-date- farmers, tho total production would be easily doubled, and it is not beyond the reach of possibility to treble- our output." After speaking of enlarging the agricultural resources which Nature has provided, and using means to increase production, he proceeded;—"ls it worth our while to take hold of this expansion in real, earnest, that is, as though'.'wo believe it could be done? The possibility of adding two or three hundred million dollars yearly to' our rural income surely makes this a big problem. Let me ask right here—ls there any other problem on the American C'ontim>nt that comes into the same class with it? You gentlemen who are engaged in this field know how it is to be worked out. Ton know, the foundation courses upon which this great wealth may be built. These courses aro plain and simple:— "i. Drain the soil.

"i. Sow only the best seed. "3. Carefully protect and s-tr.re tho products of the .'field and orchards. "•t. Feed field products only to profitable stock. "5. Put the finished product on * tho market in tho best form. "If we could in some way bring tho indifferent farmer to the knowledge .of these five plain convincing lines of work wo would have solved the problem; all else involved in agricultural improvement would come easily as a natural sequence. And what a solving of other problems there would be! A man in his province who had been a farmer for many years said to him the other day -.—'Push the drainage of land, spsnd money on it. If you can get nil the farmers to drain their land, they will have money enough to build schools for themselves.' Increase the incomes of the individual farmers, and we would have the means at our disposal to renovate, to reconstruct, to develop the rural school system along rational lines. And so we might enlarge upon this question along many lines. Put more money in the farmer's pockets as tho result of his improved work and there would be things doing in the rural constituency that wero now existent largely in the hopes and dreams of men who were sometimes called optimists and visionaries."

Education was the only mean.'; wo in New Zealand had of eliminating tho indifferent farmer, and we had not the means to provide it. He would not for a moment depreciate the value of the practical side, it wns just as important ns the scientific; but whilst even on the practical side we had much to learn, the present-day farmer had often not had the advantage, which we hoped the younger generation would have in training and education in agriculture.

It was all the more necessary that our produce should be kept up, for year by year the engagements the Dominion had to meet wero increasing. The chairman of the Bank of New Zealand in his yearly address uttered a note of warning against over-importation. In 1909 this was the cause of the scarcity of money; our imports exceeded our exports and business was seriously affected.