ELECTRICITY ON THE FARM

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 16 December 1920, Page 3

ELECTRICITY ON THE FARM

HOW THE FARMER

BENEFITS

At a meeting in connection with the above subject on Thursday evening last, mention was made of the ■ fact that Waiuku was going in for a comprehensive lighting and power scheme. A company has been formed in that centre, possessing a twenty years' option to supply lighting and power over an area of roughly 150 square miles. A vigorous campaign is being proceeded with, the object being to get everyone in the district interested in the company by taking shares on easy terms. Publicity is the watchword of the promoters, and following is one of the articles recently published, pointing out to the farmer the many advantages of electricity for lighting and power, plus cleanliness and economy : —

" Until within very recent years a problem which has continually engaged the attention ot the legislators of all British Dominions has been the marked drift of the country population into the town. The exact determination of the cause of this has not been definitely decided upon, but it is generally conceded that the drudgery associated with farming has much to accelerate the tendency. That the drudgery of farming is entirely eliminated by .the full use- of electrical energy, where available, is undoubted, and we may expect in the very near future to find that the population tide is reversed and flowing from,, the towns to the country. The significance of the reversal of the present drift from country to town can be no more marked than in a country like New Zealand, which depends almost entirely upon its agricultural produce for its prosperity. There are 125 uses for electricity on the farm, and from north to south the farmers of New Zealand have decided that many of them are necessary for efficiency and economy of operation, and are daily becoming insistent in their demands for electrical energy.

" California and Canada may be perhaps considered the pioneers of the " electricity on the farm" movement. There are in use on farms in California alone motors aggregating 200,000 h.p. in capacity. In Canada the demand for electrical energy by farmers was so insistent that one Power Supply body, the Ontario Power Commission, decided to carry out an educational campaign in rural districts. This took the form of a number of fully equipped demonstration plants mounted on closed lorries and the result was an overwhelming number of applications for connection to the supply, necessitating hundreds of miles of rural reticulation. The New Zealand farmer, who may be said in many respects —notably in the use of agricultural labour saving machines —to lead the agricultural world, has quickly appreciated the value of electricity on the farm. The electric motor is started simply by the closing of a switch —an operation any child could perform—is by reason of its compactness, mobility and reliability put to practically every use on the farm where mechanical energy is required. Thus a single 2 h.p. can be used to milk the herd and separate in the early morning, cut the supply of firewood in the forenoon, chaffcutting in the afternoon and milking and separate again in the evening. For water pumping it is found advisable to use a small Ah.p. motor direct coupled to the pump spindle. These motors require the minimun of attention, are robust in design and unlike the petrol engines which they invariably replace, will start at a moment's notice whether th 9 thermometer registers a hard frost or a heat wave.

"The early morning winter conditions of the farm, owing mainly to their black chilly dreariness, have the maximum depressive effect on the farmer. The advent of electricity dispels the former and converts the latter to a feeling akin to the elation produced by the brilliance of a thoroughfare at night. Rising at the accustomed early hour the farmer can in a few minutes electrically heat water for an early cup of tea or coffee and go to his work in the farmyard under conditions of lighting produced everywhere at the touch of a switch, There is no hunt for matches in the dark, no filling or cleaning of the obsolete oil lamp and no laboured attempts to light a fire with damp wood. The farm has become a cheerful place to work on. The drudgery of heavy work and interminable hours is a nightmare.of the past

and prospects for the future are as bright as the light produced by this weirdly . efficient and adaptable form of energy, electricity."