WILL FARMING PAY.

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 630, 3 June 1876, Page 3

WILL FARMING PAY.

Sib, — Your correspondent makes % bold assertion when he states in his letter of Thursday last, that no farming except the parceling out of the country into large sheep and cuttle run* will pay in thii part of New Zealand, beoauie of the greater facilities Cor the growth of general farm 1 produce and crops which the south island farmera hare OTer those in this part of Now Zealand. As one who speaks practically on the matter, I deqy that this is the case, or that i necetsarily it costs £10 to produce £5 worth of crops. On the other hand my own experience goes to show that it ii the smaller farmer whom it pays best to cultirato the ground, and to see this " P," or any one else, need only lookaronnd him in Waik&to j or bettor still, in the districts North of Auckland. Mere grain growing on a large scale will not pay here,;nor will it pay in the long run in the middle island as carried on. The secret of failure is the want of a system of farm* ing somo modiflsd adaptation of the rotation of crops practised by farmers at home and » more general recognition of the fact that the land before it can give a full return, must rocoive that which will tnable it to do so. Too ma»y, howerrr, cren when they get good land say,-— let us ha*« two or three good crop* off it, farm on the oheapesL scale, and when we have got ra-imbursed, then we will adopt ft b«tt«r system. Now, this is a serious mistake. ijVork your horse on scanty food till nearly atjdeatu's door, and you will find it will toko mow to got him into oondition

again than if regularly fed from the first. Tho same is applicable to a farm. Keep it up from the first, destroy the fir»t weeds, take care of your straw, make all the" manure you can, let nothing go to waste, and you will find the cry that farming won't pay » false one. Then again too many fall into the mistake of putting all their eggs into one basket, they go iv solely for shesp, or for growing wheat, or oats, or any one crop, and\if it so happen that the prico of meat falls, or disease gets, among their flooks, or they happen to have grown the one crop that is most plentiful that year and tho prico is low — then we hear the cry I hat farming wooa't pay. A. farm to be profitable should embrace mora or lets of- all kinds of produce. It ehouldjnofc wholly depend upon the milk ptil, nor yet upon th£ cornfield, but on both, and w here corn — or white crops are grown, the land should haye bean speoially prepared by being soiled, or manured to grow them. It cannot be expeoted that the same land will,Syear after year, produce one corn crop after another. If this is attempted it wil^come down to so low a fltato as tojsca<%» yield back its seed, and then we hear the cry that farming won't pay. Tha truth is, we want the farmer not the land or the particularly favourable circumstances, the lack of which "P" deplores, and here the whole fieoret lies. Farmers, unlike poets, are made not born, and I never yet saw a man of this class with reasonably sufficient capital for his business and steadiness of purpose fail. — I am &o SITTLEB, To Awamutu, May 27tb, 1876.