A PLEA FOR MODEL FARMS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 27, 25 September 1912, Page 8

A PLEA FOR MODEL FARMS.

SOME SUGGESTIONS. The question of the establishment of experimental farms, agricultural colleges, and schools is receiving a good deal of attention in Canterbury just now, and the following interesting contribution bearing on the subject if made by a successful dairyman. The farmer in question, in stating his views to a representative of the ‘^Pr,ess,” said : :< “Personally, I am strongly of the opinion that it would be a great mis take if more experimental farms arc established in Canterbury. It would moan a considerable expenditure of public money, and I don’t think the expenditure would be justified. As is is, an enormous number of experiment; arq carried out on co-operative linser by the Agricultural Department everj season, and surely enough data should be gathered from this work to render the establishment of an experimental farm unnecessary. ' If this, is not the case, then I think the co-operative experiments are more or less of a failure. ) If the co-operative experiments are doing all that they should do, and are expected to do, then the work on a special farm would be mere duplication and wasteful. Any intelligent farmer should be able to car ry out experiments. The Department is very helpful in the matter, and if willing to supply seeds of all kinds, manures, and a scheme to work on and if the farmer will do his part and carry out the instructions faithfully the experiments should be even more valuable than work that would be done on an experimental farm, because tin results’ would he applicable to the district in which they were wanted, whereas the results on the State farms might be of little use to a man whose soil and climatic conditions are different. Fanners, from my experience, don’t take much interest in experiments, and a lot of the work that is done in a district is wasted, except in the rather rare instances where a man takes the trouble to go and look at it. My idea is that the Government should establish not an experimental farm, but a model farm, By a model farm I do not. mean a place run on extravagant lines, but a farm run by a thoroughly capable and practicable man, who, with no better soil or implements and with no more labour than the average farmer can afford to use, will show at the end of the year’s working that he has made more money off the place than ninety-nine exit of a hundred of the farmers in the Dominion can do. Dairying is going to bo a big thing in Canterbury, and I think that if the Government established a model dairy farm on the lines I have mentioned, and a model cropping farm, where it was proved by real practice and hard facts that by the improved system of working used, and with no more facilities than, arc at the disposal of any farmer, a much bigger profit could be made, it would 1)0 worth a dozen, or a, gross for that matter, of purely experimental farms. As regards the suggested model dairy farm, it need not he of a greater area than fifty acres, and should be situated on reasonably good land, handy to a. main line station where all trains stop, so that visitors could easily walk to it from the station. The manager should bo available at all times, so that farm-

i ers who visited the place could be taken over the farm, and the why and wherefor of every operation lully explained to them if they eared to ask. The whole of the operations and methods, including matters of finance, should hi; freely open to inquirers of the farming community, so that they might he informed right down to the minutest details. The farm could he started with such implements and labour and with a herd of such a quality that the average farmer might reasonably be expected to be in a position to get as good, because the gradual grading up of the herd would prove a most valuable object-lesson. It would spoil the value of the place to a great extent if the herd was specially selected from- record milkers in the first place, because the results would only show what could he done under circumstances so favourable that the majority of farmers would not be able to go and do likewise. If, in the course of a few years, the manager of the farm was not able to show conclusively that he was getting a much better return, by his supposedly better -system, than other dairy farmers in the province, then so far as I can see, the farm would be serving no good purpose, because it would show that his methods, when put to the great and only reliable test of actual financial results, were no better than those in vogue at the present time. On the other hand, I think that there should he little difficulty in showing dairy fanners that, their methods can ho improved greatly.”