BACKBLOCK FARM LABOUR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 46, 24 February 1939, Page 6

BACKBLOCK FARM LABOUR

Sir, —It is a widespread belief that the farmer has “worked his land in the past” with labour paid at the rate of 30s per week plus keep, or lower. This is an error. The major expenditure on such faims has been the wages paid to the bushfeller, the fencer and the scrubcuttcr. These are not farm "rouseabouts,” but “specialists." With the exception of say two years during the 1921 slump and at the most four years during the last depression, such specialist labour, whether contract or day work, has looked for and received from five to ten pounds per week.

It is not on account of the lack of “rouseabout” labour that the back country man has been in difficulties, but solely on account of the cost of this specialised and highly paid labour that both the development and the maintenance of this class of country has been neglected. It is the very essence of the problem facing the back country farmer.

With the other hill country fariper more happily situated on land which has not “fought him" to the same extent, the unreplaced annual removal of fertility will eventually overtake him as costs further rise. Time was when two sheep to the acre would permit the recovering of the then costs. As his costs rise he is forced ta attempt to carry two and a half sheep to the acre. When costs rise further still, this man goes into the Relief Court and the three sheep to the acre man commences to feci the pincn.

It is no exaggeration to say that unless the culminating tendencies of the last twenty years are reversed, not one acre of our hill country will he farmed in twenty years' time. —I am, etc., “R.0.M.”