New Zealander From Chili.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 28 April 1914, Page 4

New Zealander From Chili.

There is at present in the dominion Mr F. J. Stratford, a New Zealander, who has been for some years in Chili, and has returned to the dominion to try to induce farmers to appreciate the advantages of the narrow country on the Pacific Coast of South America.

"Chili is a farmers' paradise,'' said Mr Stratford to a Christchurch Star reporter recently. "The land is good, the climate is almost indistinguishable from that of Palmerston North, and land is cheap. Fine country, as good as any £20 land in New Zealand, can be obtained for £2 an acre, and the labour is just as The farm hands tEere practically work for their keep and clothes, and they are happier than they would be with ten dnllars a day. Each farmer has a license to sell liquor and usually runs a store to supply his workmen with goods, so that the money he pays out as wages he gets back very quickly. Anybody in Chili can get a license to sell liquor, but there is very little drunkenness. The chief liquors are wine and apple cider and really I have seen more drunkenness in New Zealand in one month than I have seen In Chili in two years and a half.

"Chili is usually regarded as a narrow strip of land squeezed right on to the sea, but it is two hundred miles wide, and it is well opened up by railways. In the south the principal industry, is cattle raising-, hut Che country is so good that indolence ->a the great characteristic of the farmer. The cattle are turned into the bush country as soon as they are weaned, and left there for three years. They live on a native young green cane that grows the more freely the more it is eaten down. Every year the cattle are mustered and the young ones branded, but after three years in the bush lands the grown beasts are put into the fattening paddocks to prepare for the market. Conditions for cattle raising in the south are so good good that the farmers do not trouble to do more than let grow. Agricultural farming in the south is hardly known, and dairying is hardly practised at all. This is what fhe country needs. If some energetic New Zealandera went over there and started in dairying they would do wonderfully well. "The local market for butter cannot be met an'd cheese Has to be imported. Butter in the winter rises to 3s a pound, simply because no effort is made to jmt the dairying industry on a proper basis. Further north wheat is grown in Targe quantities but cannot keep up with demand of the local market, and north of Santiago the country is devoted to mining.