ROOM FOR EXPANSION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 November 1943, Page 3

ROOM FOR EXPANSION

OF WOMEN’S LAND SERVICE.

EMPHASISED BY MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE.

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The Women’s Land Service had 1000 active members, said the Minister of agriculture, Mr B. Roberts, in an address last night in which he urged women to enlist for work on the land and farmers to employ more women. The employment of female labour oh the land was, in the main, the solution of the farm labour problem, he said, and the importance of New Zeaalnd keeping up its production had been brought home to people by the introduction of butter rationing. The amount of food that was required overseas, Mr Roberts observed, was staggering, and he knew only too well the difficulties of meeting New Zealand’s supply commitments. New Zealand must supply butter, cheese, and meat to Britain and the Allied forces in the Pacific, and must be in a position tc feed the starving millions of Europe. The Allied forces in the Pacific alone could and would take New Zeaalnd’s output, but New Zealand must send produce to England and provide for its own people. The land service was one of the highest priority jobs in the country, said Mr Roberts, appealing to employers to release women who wished to enrol in it. Girls were placed only on farms ' approved by primary production councils, and the councils had taken their tasks in this direction seriously. Appealing to farmers to make use of w omen’s services, the Minister said that there was reluctance in some districts to employ girls, probably based on prejudice, but it was found that when a few girls were placed in employment in a district applications for girls noticeably increased in that district. Farmers should consider whether by employing women they could r.ot increase their production or carry cut maintenance work. He pointed cut that the Government paid the employers of the girls a subsidy while they were learning their work.