Agricultural and Pastoral.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XIII, Issue 580, 28 May 1868, Page 3

Agricultural and Pastoral.

THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST. The leader ia Tuesday’s Herald is vevv well as far as it pries, but it d 'es not go far enough: it shows the benefit nearly every interest would derive from the vigorous prosecution of agriculture,how natives would he enrich ad. and tbs land owners get rents and farms for nothing; but it does not show that the farmer, the- man who is to do aii this, is to get any return fur his labour and capital. No man can attempt to farm, can sacrifice his time and energy upon the pursuit, unless there is a reasonable prospect of some reward. If farming won’t pay it is useless to talk about it. The thing is to get the place so as it will pay, and then we shall have plenty of farms. We must have land, and labour, and everything that farms require, cheap enough to make corn-growing as profitable as any other business. Till that is the case it is idle to look for thriving agriculture.

The opinions expressed on large ' farms is not good at present. Agriculture is a progressive idea, something like the oak—first the acorn, then the sapling, then the tree that will stand the storms of centuries. If we attempt to have large farms before we have got little ones, we are beginning in the middle, and arc* sure to make a muddle of it. If twenty acres of land pay better to graze than to farm, how can a profit be got out of four hundred acres. The fact is, this Province is already spoiled with large holders and speculators. It wants now plenty of small freeholders, and those small holders must make it pay. Those

who can make a small farm pay are the men who will soon get large ones; they will soon come to steam ploughs and implements. This Colony lias plenty of men and abundance of land, but if one man cannot earn on a piece of land a sufficiency for himself, men who have capital will not bring it here to invest it in such a losing game. No doubt experience and population Would enable farming on a large scale! to pay better than little farms, but] where there is no farming little farms] must be started and succeed before the' larger can be attempted. 1 It speaks of skilled farm laborers; being scarce. Why are they so? Because when they come her.* they cannot get a hit of land to settle on. The men who make the land valuable artkept off it by the high prices which are the result of speculation. Land must be sold like anything else, at its cash value, or it will never got worked. The policy of leasing native lands for farm purposes is bad. If we had plenty of money it might be different, but farmers cannot afford to pay them rents and make their wastes into farms. If they want farms and money they are as well able to earn it as white men are. I don't believe in keeping natives drunk for the sake of patriotism. If they will not work their wastes let them sell them ; white men do not come here to work for them. If the natives never work they are beggars; and, if they will nut work, the sooner they get that position the better, for I cannot see how white men can be expected to find them in pocket money. This is my Native policy. The writer of the article speaks of vineyards and hop gardens; but if wheat will not pay, how can they be a profit ? We must have food first, and plenty of it, and then—when we export grain, and money gets plentiful —-other industries will follow as a natural consequence. I. K. Sutton,