SHEEP-FARMING—PAST AND PRESENT ITS PROFITS AND ITS PROSPECTS.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 29, 15 July 1867, Page 170

SHEEP-FARMING—PAST AND PRESENT ITS PROFITS AND ITS PROSPECTS.

[COMMUNICATED.] Few people have any very definite idea of the enormous profits that have been realised from sheep-farming; they know that those profits have been large, but scarcely appreciate their extent. Let us suppose a run taken possession of with a flock of sheep consisting of 5000 ewes, and allow for the nett increase at the ••ent. (little enough.) This will in a term of five years became a flock of 20,891 sheep of all ages —being more than five times the original flock and, allowing but au average price of 8s per fleece, there will be realised for wo°l alone .£11,492 15s, —averaging considerably over £2OOO per annum. What wonder then is there of the sudden growth into wealth of some who happened at the right time to secure exiensive runs, and by so doing monopolise the country to the almost total exclusion of the bonajide agriculturist, —the true stamina of a country’s prosperity, —the only class that make a permanent home in a colony. It cannot be expected of the sheep-farmer to do this; the Colony ir to him but a means loan end, —the :accumulation of wealth suinoivtit to enable him to return and live in luxury in his native land, taking there the -tand that his riches will enable him to do. They will tell us that the Province is unfitted for agricultural pursuits ; bur this is not true, though it is true enough that they have succeeding m monopolising such lauds for runs—so much so that but little of such has evilr been offered for sale by the Government, nor any attempt made to promote the pursuit of agriculture until the lately leased plains were placed in the market for a term of years ; but such a system canm.t be expected to prove other than a failure, for no man can be supposed to have either heart or inclination to improve leasehold land as he would his own freehold. Moreover, it is a principle antagonistic to those of a true Briton, who desires au inheritance that can be held in possession by his children. We may be told that the evils of the existing state of things will work its own cure. If it be so we have a severe probation to suffer before it is expected, tor at the present time something like actual ruin threatens the Province. We have not a single export except wool, which is at. the best but a questionable advantage to any beside the actual grower, and perhaps the Province would be better without, as but the minimum of labor is employed in its production, and its immense profits are either hoarded to be spent out of the Province, or they are invested in die purchase of still larger runs than that which has produced them —still further to the exclusion of the good agricultural settler. But in spite of all the advantages of the runholder it appears at length that he has overreached himself, and even his calling appears to be about to cease to be profitable. The increase of their flocks must be checked as it has become an unsaleable commodity, and there is no resource, but boiling down for tallow —tallow to export to Great Britain ; and it seems more than doubtful whether it will pay its cost. The embryo company of boiling down runholders seem to forget than an entire revo . tion has of late taken'place in the tal. low trade. Illuminating and lubricating oils of far superior nature and qualities to animal fats have been discovered and are prepared in quantities.practically inexhaustible. At the same time there is no dearth of tallow for such purposes as require its use, -nor of any

other substaucP 1 whose place it can! supply, as wool did cotton to some extent’ during the late American war. Wool too has fallen in value, and stilL threatens a further decline; so that even the'hitherto prosperous class of runholders are threatened with a share of their fellow-colonists’' difficulties. There is yet the forlorn hope of the sanguine believers-.|n the existence of a payable gold-fieldi in the Province —to all others a faint mythical shadow, at least as it stands at present. Should anything come of it, it will save the province; if hot, we must pay the penalty of the gross political mis management, which has kept away the agriculturist and encouraged the system of runholding. Had. the Government of Hawke’s Bay in its first days extinguished the Native title to the land lying within a radius of (say) 20 miles of the port, and resold it for agricultural purposes, we should at this time he reaping the benefit in vast manufacturing establishments, in our tanneries, our flour mills, our soap, candle, and woollen manufactories; — we should have been self-supporting, and have introduced capital, and kept it in circulation amongst us—for all this would have been the necessary result 0f,,. agriculture,— agriculture which alone can bring a population together, and make and keep it independent and self-reliant.