THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 137, 17 June 1926, Page 4

THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

The Dominion’s agricultural production is so much lower than it ought to be, partly because preventable pests and diseases are ignorantly allowed to flourish, but mainly because very few farmers have more than a 50 per cent. kn,owledg*e of the most economic methods of production. It is certainly anomalous also that the veterinary branch of the department has at least an official predominance over the other branches. As we have said, the department’s veterinary officers are competent. They must be unusually competent, or the Dominion would not have the cleanest, healthiest and best-bred stock in the world—as in general it has. But the Dominion has not the best soil returns in the world, or nearly the best. It does not get the best possible results out of its pasture, or its wheat fields, or its turnip and mreen fodder fields. It could produce 80 or 40 per cent, more than its cultivated land produces now if its farmers knew half as much about the economy of the soil as they do about keeping their animals free from disease ; and so far as the department is concerned comparatively little is done to show them. Little is done because there are very few, if any, men in the Fields Division who are experts not merely in the “ small branches of agriculture ” but in agriculture in general. It is doubtful if there is now any expert left in the Dominion who can make the department what Mr. Hawken clearly wants to see made of it, and must make of it if he is to exercise an appreciate influence on production. As Minister he cannot help regarding it as a melancholy fact that in a great pro-

ducing couiUtj like this the Department of Ag-riculture should be held in such poor puplic estetm. But it is a melancholy fact also that the men who might have made their influence felt in the country have not been encouraged to stay here, and are now giving other countries the benefit of their brains and enthusiasm. If Mr. Hawken wishes to give either the farmer or the farmer’s wife, the big man or the little man, the kind of assistance that all most need, he will have to consider a drastic reorganisation of the producing side of tire department and will have to earmark a good deal of the extra money he proposes to spend for the salaries of one 'or two really-authoritative agriculturists.—Christchurch Press.