FORESTRY AND UNEMPLOYMENT

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 44, 21 February 1930, Page 8

FORESTRY AND UNEMPLOYMENT

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Mr. W. T. Strand undoubtedly hits the ,nail'on the head wheti ho advocates the more intensive use of the land as the real remedy for unemployment. But as a means to more intensive use of the land may I be allowed to urge the importance and value of a vigorous combined policy of forestry and laud settlement, such as that so strongly advised by the great forestry expert, the late Sir David Hutchins, 1.F.5., in his report on "New Zealand Forestry.'"

"Kauri, with half a million acres of demarcated forest, could still pay the cost of the war—perhaps twice over," declares Sir David on page i of that report; for he estimates (page 5) that "£lO net per acre per year can be confidently expected from, the cultivated kauri forests of the future. Furthermore," he adds, "half a million acres of kauri forest, cultivated as in Europe, would find much forestry work now for returned soldiers (he .wrote in 1919), and eventual permanent land settlement far exceeding all that has been effected up to date, under the' closer Land for Settlements Acts since 1892, and the Land Settlement Finance Act of 1909 (5780 settlers under the two Acts). Half a million acres of cultivated kauri forest would mean some 6666 families earning good wages, settled permanently on the soil, together with many engaged in small farming and in the milling and transport of timber. It would mean support to all the wood-using industries and some lowering of the cost of house-building and house rent. These things are to be obtained by nothing more novel or hazardous than following the colonial policy of the French in the latitudes of the kauri forests on the Mediterranean!" But, continued Sir David Hutehins (page 5): "Cultivated forests as in Europe, if established in New Zealand, 1 would eventually support a population about equal to the whole present population. Taking the European standard of 25 per cent.—the standard in the most industrial and best populated parts of Europe—New Zealand would require about 16,000,000 acres of natural iorest. The Japanese, with a land of mountainous volcanic islands like New Zealand, are taking a forest proportion higher— viz., 65 per cent.; but let us now consider the European proportion. Sixteen million acres at an average of five persons per family, and 200 acres of forest per family, would mean with .the resulting .sawmill employment a population of some 500,000 souls. Working half on small farms and half in the forest, as in Europe, the population supported would be some 1,000,000.

. . . But, if we take European figures, the employment in valuable forest, such as kajiri forest, would be at the rate of one family per 75 acres. . . .It seems quite reasonable to expect that, with its normal area o£ 18,000,000 acres of national forest, there will eventually be a permanent forest population in New Zealand of between 1.000,000 and 2,000,000 souls."

Sir David Hutchins knew what he was talking about. He supported these figures with carefully drawn-up balance-sheets, etc. Surely, it is up to the Government, and especially to the Minister of Lands and the Commissioner of State Forests, to put their heads together to increase the timber supply of New Zealand and to solve our grave unemployment problem. —I am, etc., FOREST LOVER.