Training Brings Results

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 586, 12 February 1929, Page 8

Training Brings Results

Farmer Gains by Intense Courses

BY dealing directly with the man who matters —the small practical farmer—the Massey Agricultural College at Palmerston North is helping many struggling producers on to the straight and narrow path of profitable farming. The earlier groundwork of agricultural knowledge is being laid in educational institutions throughout the country, but in Auckland this is considered to be insufficient without the establishment of agricultural technical schools.

a comparatively short time has elapsed since the potential benefits of agricultural training were recognised by those fostering higher education in New Zealand, its results are shown in a hundred and one ways all over the productive field Unostentatiously its influence has percolated into the fabric of our products, and almost without knowing it, the man on the land has been reaping the fruits of science and method. This

year promises even more tangible advancement toward security for the sheepfarmer and the dairyman. Criticism has been levelled at the methods of the Massey College because of its suggested bias toward training professional men for purely academic accomplishment. This is answered by the chairman of the council, Sir George Fowlds, of Auckland, who says that less than 10 per cent, of the men turned out from the Massey College are academic in their pursuits. Moreover, it is explained, the college, in order faithfully to fulfil its correct function in the country’s progress, must be so equipped that it can develop men of degree in agriculture so they in turn might train the teachers in district high schools and secondary schools generally, where the elements of rural work are already being taught. Men of scientific experience are required also, for the Department of Agriculture, so that the whole field of the producer’s requirements might be encompassed by systematic schemes. This is well-sounding so far as it

goes, but to the man in the street, whose chief concern is the production of immediate results, the work which is being done for the small farmer at the college is more prominently noted. Possibly the greatest contribution that has yet been made to the cause of farming—certainly the greatest the Massey College has made —is embraced by a series of short annual courses, lasting 11 weeks, and timed so that farmers’ sons and employees cpu leave their holdings in the slack season and fortify themselves with a knowledge of the means to greater production. HOT WATER PROBLEM

The course is intensive, and the farmer-students are enabled to pack into 11 weeks more useful knowledge about their own business than they possibly could gain in many years of unsystematic operation on their own holdings. Different phases of dairying and pig-raising work is concentrated upon just now, and during the current year provision is being made for sheepfarmers and, in a less expansive way, for the culture of bees, poultry and other rural sidelines. In addition, an intensely Important experiment is now in progress, from which it is hoped to solve the problem of securing hot water quickly and cheaply for use on the farm, thus raising the standard of cleanliness to its highest possible degree. Shortly, too, it is hoped to supply from the college a formula for pig-breeding which will immensely widen the commercial potentialities of bacon and pork production. MISSING LINK It is rightly argued by Sir George Fowlds that the place to gain a knowledge in practical farm work is on the farm itself, but he emphasises the fallacy of overlooking what he terms “getting the whys' and wherefores” of the farm business. To assist in creating the right agricultural atmosphere among the people, he supports the advocacy of agricultural technical colleges at Auckland and the other centres of New Zealand. They are an essential part of proper agricultural education, he says, and their cost, he anticipates, would be little greater than that of ordinary technical schools. In view of the excellent training which Is being accomplished at Ruakura State Farm, the Wesley Training College at Paerata and many other institutions throughout the Dominion, Sir George considers it an opportunity lost if the authorities do not complete the link in this valuable chain of progress by filling the gap between the elemental agricultural education at secondary schools and the more advanced —but equally practical—courses given at the Massey College. The college at Palmerston North he declares to be a pronounced success after a year’s working. “My only regret is that it was not started 20 years ago,” he says, “because it is making the biggest contribution in history to our primary development.”