DETERIORATED LAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 March 1939, Page 2

DETERIORATED LAND

SERIOUS POSITION IN NORTH ISLAND DUE TO EROSION AND ECONOMIC FACTOR. VIEWS OF MR H. MORRISON. “It has been estimated that within the next seven or ten years four million acres of land will go out of production in the North Island,” the president, Mr Hugh Morrison, told yesterday’s meeting of the Wairarapa Provincial Executive of the Farmers' Union. The deterioration, he added, was due partly to erosion and partly to the economic factor. Mr Morrison said that many farmers were in a very serious position, struggling in the backblocks under adverse conditions. The remedy was to classify the land, the useless areas being forested and the marginal land assisted by Government subsidy. At a recent conference at Wanganui, a Taranaki man had spoken about “the noble women who were struggling in poverty as bad as any peasant in the world.” In the South Island there were hundreds of thousands of acres of hill country going out of production. It was difficult to imagine what would happen if the present high costs and , low returns continued.

A further fall in wool prices would result in a catastrophe. Many farmers were merely hanging on until their leases fell due. Under ruling costs it was impossible for those men to handle deteriorated land. The position was the same all over New Zealand. The Farmers’ Union had asked the Government to set up a Royal Commission to investigate the position of the sheep farmer. A Government committee was already, doing good work in that direction.

' Mr J. C. Cooper: “There are a lot of farmers in the Wairarapa who will not be able to carry on.” Mr Morrison said that as far as he

knew there was no erosion in the Wairarapa, but on the East Coast there were thousands of acres covered in scrub and noxious weed. With the fall in wether and ewe prices, farmers could not ntake enough to keep the land clean, and it would be abandoned in another decade. In the Wairarapa it was the economic factor that was

preventing faripers from improving their .land. Mr L. T. Daniell said the situation was far more serious than most people imagined. More and: more land was deteriorating every year. The discussion then lapsed.