OVER-SUBDIVISION

Opotiki News, Volume I, Issue 106, 7 November 1938, Page 2

OVER-SUBDIVISION

MR. K. 15. LEYY\S W.\J!MN(i povekty on small farms “I regard New Zealand as easily the ’host farming! country of the 20 countries i visited overseas, hut- we cannot afford to rest on our oars; we must keep abreast in research, in method, in per acre production, and' in quality of product,” said Mr. E. Bruce Levy, of the Plant Research Bureau, Palmerston North, during a lecture in Hamilton on “impressions of (frassfands Overseas.”

“At the same time we must keep a close watch cm the economics ol land utilisation and land subdivision in order to avoid many of the pitfalls that have undoubtedly befallen certain overpopulated or over subdivided .ugrieultural land's to-day.” he eontmmd. iSmall farms meant poverty, and hence inefficiency in production and land utilisation, and what probably impressed him most in peasant Europe and parts of Ireland, said the speaker, was the antiquated methods and inefficiency ol production.

“What we want in New Zealand are a well-balanced economic farm unit on the one hand, giving a good livelihood' to each individual farmer, and oil the other hand, efficient industrial developments that will enable us to build a nation. Perhaps nothing appealed to me more than the tact that the greatest might of Britain Jay in her balance of industries and agricultuYe and not on agriculture alone,” said Mr. Levy.