Value of the Forestry Department.

Progress, Volume XVI, Issue 12, 1 August 1921, Page 280

Value of the Forestry Department.

VIEWS OF FARMERS’ UNION PRESIDENT. Some observations upon Forestry were made by the President of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union (Mr. G. W. Leadley) in his address to the recent Conference of the Union. Earlier in his address, Mr. Leadley had condemned the multiplication of State Departments. “ I would exclude from the sentiments then expressed the Department of Forestry,” he said. “I do not think there is any inconsistency in this, because, honestly, I do believe that this Department is needed and is calculated to be of immense benefit to the country. “ For fifty-eight years I have lived on the great Canterbury Plain. In my youth and early manhood I was with its vast treeless, objectless expanse, I have seen it emerge from that condition and gradually assume its present form, and I know and appreciate the difference. I can understand why it was that the Koran commends to the especial favour of Heaven the man who plants a tree. I am fixed in this opinion that the Department of Forestry is necessary, and will, under proper and efficient direction, and with adequate support, be one of our most useful and profitable ventures.

" We may sometimes learn from our enemies. The other day in a work on this subject I read that before the war Germany had 25 per cent, of its total area under State forests, that 400,000 persons were employed in connection' with them, and that

the profit to the State was eighteen million pounds sterling a year.

"We need not, however, go to Germany for examples when we find the Motherland awaking to a sense of the great need of a more active and intelligent policy in regard to this matter. Two years since a Forestry Act was passed, a Commission was appointed with large powers and a grant 01 three and a-half million pounds placed at its disposal. The setting up of an Imperial Forestry Bureau will enable the British Isles to get into touch with similar work in other parts of the Empire, and in this way there will be a systematic and businesslike effort to develop and extend the timber resources of the Empire. When we learn that last year Britain spent £70,000,000 on imported timber this is necessary."— Dominion.

We are indeed pleased to note the foregoing from the President of the Farmers' Union. Only little further enlightenment is necessary and the Farming community will realise that Forestry is useless without the Sawmiller, and that to carry out the ideals of Forestry " closer utilisation " is essential, and for this it is necessary to keep out low-grade foreign timbers.