STATE FARMS AND EDUCATION.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43099, 1 June 1907, Page 4

STATE FARMS AND EDUCATION.

ijfe.Ss interesting fie note that the Minister for Agriculture, the Hon. R. Mo Nab, is not greatly enamoured of State farms. Recently he made . an important statement on the subject. He said that the position was not altogether satisfactory. This was due mainly to the fact that the farms were scattered all over the place in the North Island, and could not, therefore, 'be as closely administered as was desirable. They were not really experimental farms ,in the proper sense of the word, but were just ordinary 'agricultural farms of very little use to the settlers for the purposes of illustration. There were exceptions to this, of Course, but, speaking broadly, the farms had outlived their usefulness. Agriculture ini the South) Island was more advanced than it was in the JSfcrth Island, and in the earlier ~ stages of cultivation there the farms might have been of some use, but rfow that the farmer of the North Island was growing miore advanced in his methods the usefulness of the faatas was growing lees, for they could teach him very little that- he did not know. For the first time, he intended this year to haVe the ‘cost of the administration and upkeep of the farms ' taken put in a separate balance sheet, *0 thiati it might be seen! what they /ware Costing the Country. What was • cally wanted) was that the farms .. "houjld be made experimental stations a biore modem manner, and that thev should be equipped and run up'•n sidentifec and up-to-date lines. But f his Would cost a lot of money in * ’ ear present scattered condition. It —a not intended to establish a State - m in the South Island. The farms I d been established in the North) ap'•'renitiy on account of the North IkJ- vd being eminently intended as the ; ' jit-growing part of the colonv. and •> was better. adapted for growing •nut side by side with other forms of -f .' rioultuire than was the South.