AGRICULTURE IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume IX, Issue 575, 8 May 1858, Page 3

AGRICULTURE IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

(From the 'Sydney Morning Herald,' March 1.))

The recent meeting of the members of the Cumberland Agricultural Society was certainly not worthy in point of attendance either of thesociety or the country. Not more than a dozens members were present to show their zeal in thecause. The association of themetropolitan county,, which ought to take the lead and set an example to similar local societies of energy, enthusiasm* and successful management, threatens to die of inanition. This lack of practical interest in the promotion of agriculture contrasts, strangely with the immense amount of speechifying; and; letter writing on the land question which ha* lately been exhibited, and is apparently a littlein contradiction of the alleged passionate desireofthe people to go a-farming. The show at Liverpool, it is true, was somewhat better attended, but then it was held at election time,, wlien candidates felt it incumbent on them to. do the amiable, and pretend to take great interest in ploughs and potatoes, winnowers and wheat. The exhibition itself was admittedly a failure.. The society, so lately resuscitated, must not allow itself to be discouraged however by thepartial success which has attended its first year's operations, and the limited interest it has. succeeded in inspiring. It has an ample spherefor usefulness before it, and perseverance will hardly fail of achieving an amount of success well worth striving for. The utility of such societies, where sufficient enthusiasm has l>een awakened to sustain them wish- vigour, has been demonstrated to. be very considerable, and thegreater the amount of indifference that mayexist at present in the county of Cumberland; among the professed friends of. agriculture, the greater the need of an active agency to arouse? them from it. At the same time the society has unavoidable* difficulties to-encounter. If must not he forgotten tliat no agricultural avssociation can be kept. alive • merely by amateurs and theorist*. Patronage is no-'subsiituk) for support; anleaa there is°a band of actual cultivators, men who are personally and pecuniarily interested i.v feka

improvement of agriculture, to take an-interest in the meetings. aud exhibitions, the society •irnist droop. Tor a show .'to be successfully should take in the centre of an agricultural district, ; at a spot easily accessible by the surrounding -cultivators. The „countj--of' Cumberland can hardly claim .to. be an agricultural -county. The greater portion of its area is untilled, and not adapted for tillage. Its farms are to be found , mostly along-the bank of .the river ''thofc forms its.inland boundary, or in isolated l -va3leys,/wherever.a patch of.fertile soil is to be found. "Parramatta, geographically considered, ■is no doubt centrally situated as respects the 'county, .and even perhaps .as respects the agri- ! culture-in the county, but in the present state <«f the roads, and with the trouble and expense of '■travelling, it can hardly be considered so accessible as,to make it easy to concentrate on it the fanners settled along the outskirts. In its immediate neighbourhood there is but little tillage. .Gardens, yineyards, and orchards, Tather than farms, surround it. The visitor rmay take his place in a railway carnage at Sydney and travel all the way to Liverpool without catching sight of a ploughed field for 'the whole .distance of twenty-two miles from :fhe metropolis. The communication with the metropolis is easy enough, and-when there is to see at Parramatta, the citizens can "troop out easily enough, to see it, but the communication with the arable country is not so complete, and the actual farmers—the most essential portion of the visitors —can neither come --nor send without great toil and expense. The -opening of the railway to Campbelltown, which j ■will now soon take place, will, to some extent, remedy this inconvenience so far as the southern^ part of the county is concerned ; and,whenever the extensions to Penrith and Windsor can be completed, it may be possible to hold an exhibition at which the actual fanners-of the county __ .wiih their produce can be easily present, as well ..jis sight-seers from Svdoey. ' The agriculture -of the whole colony, like that of ihe metropolitan county, is scattered. Taken altogether there is a good deal of it, though not so much as could be wished. But it lies in comparativelylittle patches,here and there, or in strips along v*he margins of rivers. ...There is no one district of large extent which ,is..uniformly' covered in Jail directions with farms. . It.,is owing .rerhaps to this isolation of the various gronps of agriculturists from one another that exhibitions in this colony have at all fallen short in interest, excellence, or frequency, as compared with those of other colonies. It is not from any want of productiveness in the soil, or enterprise in the people. % •■At the exhibition in the Domain last week there was a fuller display of improved implements of husbandry than has been usual on such occasions. The progress of agriculture in Great Britain "arid 'America has been-intimately connected with the increasing useof mechanical contrivances, and indeed would have been knfamiliar use in this colony also if our fanners are to compete at all successfully with producers in the rest of the world. The age is mechanical, and those countries where most Skill is shown in taking advantage of inventive ingenuity distance in the race others to which nature has been more prodigal of its favours, but which are more indolent in the use of art. But agricultural machines can only be employed to advantage when farms are large enoagh to bear pvofitablythe investment of capital. If the implements of tillage in use in are compared with those now common in England and America, the disadvantage under which the small landholder labours is seen in an instant. The use of machines is to save the payment of wages in labour, but where a working farmer owns no more laud than he can till with his own hands or those of his family, there are no wages for him to pay, and nothing therefore to save. Labour is expended to the greatest advantage when in combination with capital. "' Gentleman farming," as it is called, has notoriously betm an unprofitable pursuit in' Australia, but if working farmers generally occupied a sufficient area of land to enable them to jnake use of the best labour-saving machines, would be carried on generally with economy than-when each tiller of the .soil working with but' little capital obtains 'hardly more profit than is equal to the ordinary ■--wages of labour. In this colony there are hundreds of farms- averaging not more than thirty .acreseach. This, except in special cases, is too -small an area to enable the proprietor, and still less a tenant, to-invest much capital m lirst--class implements. In South Australia the ..average"size of the farms, as laid out by Government, is about .eighty acres, and in practice the farmers hold usually two or three contiguous sections. Heaping machines are in universal use, and the importations and sale of improved ' implements from the best English makers have been very considerable. Agricultural exhibitions will do much service by familiarising the public with the best'implements, and bringing binder notice all the newest inventions.