UNDER PIHANGA

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 157, 31 December 1931, Page 8

UNDER PIHANGA

CHANGES IN FARMING

GRASSING THE PUMICE

NATURE TRUST SCHEME

(By an "Evcnino Post" Representative.) Farmed, even cropped in places, seventy years ago, allowed to fall back, thon burned, and burned, and burnod, the pumice lands around Lake Taupo near Tokaanu nro a uniquo specimen of economic waste. In the interest both of economics and of tho Maori owners, these scrub lands should be turned into pasture. Tho providing, for general purposes, of a certain amount of funds derived from the Crown purchase of tho bed of Lako Taupo, and tho investment in Tokaanu Native lands of soino of the capital, money or" tho Native Trust, raise a new hope for Tokaanu progress. Tor somo years tho visitor approaching Tokaanu along the Taupo road, looking up at the pasturo established by the Prisons Department on tho higher laud north-east of tho Tongariro (Upper Waikato?) Eiver, has known that this pumice land can be made into good pasture. Now, on crossing the Tongariro bridge, he finds on the fiat newly established paddocks of grass and oats i surrounding a neat farm cottage, tho homo of the Native Trustee's farm manager. But this clearing, spreading over tho flat and beginning to attack tho foothills of Pihanga, is only a small part of the Native Trustee's farm dovelopmcnt area at Tokaanu (3067 acres), and it is only a beginning. It serves, however, to confirm tho picturo of Tokaanu as a centre of farming as well as of fishing, with the Maoris usefully employed on their own lands, and perhaps ultimately becoming individual owners. Already the Native Trustee is doing what tho Prison Farms (having their own labour) cannot do—lie is employing Maoris at productivo work. Pihanga's crater has looked out on much ebb and flow since tho white man first came nearly a hundred years ago. Now the historic mountain may soo the beginning of a deflnito change in the fortunes of tho Native inhabitants. STUMPING- OR SURFACE SOWING? Tho Nativo Trust is one of tho Departments under tho Ministerial control of the Minister of Nativo Affairs, Sir Apirana Ngata. This Tokaanu development scheme includes a largo amount of river flat on either side of tho Tongariro River, and a certain amount of hill land. Somo of tho river flats aro more than ordinarily good, but a great deal of potentially valuable delta and lake-side land is undrainable —except by lowering the lake —and is thereforo at present useless. Variations in the quality and condition of tho land—there aro piimico and pumice—make it impossible to sum up tho farming outlook shortly. Pumico land in tho rough carries varying growths of scrub and (or) manuka. Whero scrub is heavy, it is impossible to make a short cut by ploughing in with a tractor. Manuka does not rot in tho ground. Much that is ploughed in would be harrowed up again. The moro thorough—and, of course, more expensive* —way is to grub out the stumps, bum, and then plough. This is tho general rule of tho Prison Farms, with their abundant labour and good plant. Ou tho river flats tho Nativo Trustee's officers do not always grub the stumps to clear the way for immediate ploughing. Over considerable aveaa they have adopted tho plan of cutting, and burning', and surfaco sowing. They are well satisfied with the strike of grass. It has taken the place of scrub from 6ft. to 12ft. high. Two years ago similar scrub occupied the site of tho farm cottago and paddock pictured in this issue. Another photograph shows drain excavation with Maori labour, part of the swamp drainago scheme. The problem now is to stock the paddocks and keep off the wild or semiwild horses. That means fencing, and fences are not popular with tho horses, nor with angling motorists. The latter as a rule cannot swim the Tongariro; tho former can and do. Although it has been little more than a year in operation at Tokaanu, the Native Trust can point to considerable achievement—a total cleared area of over 2000 acres; area cleared and surface sown, 715 acres; area ploughed (in grass or crops, or ready therefor), or stumped and ready for immediate ploughing, 906 acres; area ready for. burning and surface sowing in autumn, 405 acres. Consider this in terms of pioneering a non-farming district whero neither labour nor plant is sufficiently specialised. DIFFICULTIES OF PIONEER FARMING. Farming a new district—especially pumice farming—is built up of experience. Difficulties arise, and ai-e solved, iii course of time, by experience and by expansion. Experience tells what is needed, and expansion provides tho needful. It provides, inter alia, farm implements and machines and tho skilled labour required to apply them. A farmer of land not surrounded by other farms is thrown on his own slender resources. After farming has expanded, he becomes much better off by being able to draw on the technical resources of a wholo district. Thus pioneering has its special difficulties and its own special costs arising therefrom. A farmer may sow oats with the intention to-plough.it in and provide tho puinieosoil with-much-needed humus. When ploughing-in time arrives his own plant may be engaged in other and essential work, and the technical resources of tho district may fall short of the- job of ploughiug-in sixty acres of oats, or even one acre. A striking instance of this has just occurred at tho Nativo Trust development at Tokaanu. Tlie Native Trustee controls only free labour. He controls no money other than trust money. He works on the money of Maori beneficiaries, and although to a largo extent it is lent to Maori farmers or to Maori land development schemes, it is nevertheless a trust investment. In a district like Tokaanu, where the farm labour available is mostly Maori, and where Maori labour is proper to a Maori land development scheme, tho Maori labourer must nevertheless give work that satisfies the administrators of Maori trust money, and this—in the particular case referred to—he failed to do. Tho failure was a failure moro of plant than of man, but certain it is that the attempts to plough in the oats were erratic and had to bo stopped. Ploughs.and harness that once were new, but have lain unused in fields and sheds for years, ever since tho last spurt of Maori farming at Tokaanu, have not the quality of being instantly ready. THE MAN AND THE MACHINE. Such an inability to undertake the ploughing of a level field is just one instance of tho difficulties of establishing farming in an utterly undeveloped district where ploughing and cultivation are of vital importance. Farm programmes depend on the availability of the man and the machine. For the Maori as a man and as a farm worker much may bo said. Not so for his machinery. There is a silvor lining to that cloud. Tho pumice soil, with moderate) fertilising, had given an unusually good crop of oats—almost too good to bo ploughed in. The failure of the Maori,

ploughing settled tho question. The oats would have to be chaffed. That meant a search for a reaper and binder, located eventually on tho farm of a Native owner. Fortunately it had been in better hands than had the ploughs. It worked, and tho oats problem was settled. Considering the many difficulties involved by pioneering and experimentation —difficulties, removable in time, but inseparable from development —farm operations on tho pumice lands near Tokaanu aro satisfactory. They aro blazing a trail that will never be opened irtiless someone is bold enough to get to work, and the work of tho last few years is worth all the words of the preceding twentj.