HIGH PRICE OF LAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 29, 24 June 1914, Page 4

HIGH PRICE OF LAND.

Says tlui Auckland Herald:—"One good effect of the high price of dairy land lias been that it has compelled , many farmers to go in for more intensive cultivation. V»ith cheap land very little attention is given to anything but grass, but when land becomes valuable the farmer immediately discusses ways and means of obtaining the same net results from half the acreage. This is effected by keeping better though fewer cows, and by growing green crops for summer and root crops for winter on every acre that can be spared for the plough, liy heavier fertilising and topdressing, by planting shelter trees, and by generally improving the carrying capacity of the farm and the productiveness of the stock. What New Zealand wants is a multitude of small farms and not a limited number of large ones, and as the high land value has a decided tendency in that direction it must i not be accounted altogether an evil. What is wholly evil is not the increased price caused by the natural operations of the law of supply and demand, but the artificial and unwarranted prices caused by the witholding of land from settlement. An abnormal inflation of values has undoubtedly resulted from tlic unnatural restrictions placed upon land seekers through the locking up of native lands and the inaccessibility of Crown lands through want of roads and railways. The interference with the land supply inaugurated by the Continuous Government is the face of a great and constant demand by landseclcers could not but unduly enhance values in many districts. The remedy for this is obvious.