Vlll INTRODUCTION 



of attention from the Government, either directly or 

 indirectly through the University institutions. There 

 is a marked tendency to increase the supply of expert 

 technical knowledge, founded on the latest develop- 

 ments of physical, chemical, and biological researches, 

 made available to the farmer by the national funds, and 

 rightly so, but there has been a general failure to 

 appreciate correctly the practical value of research in 

 the economic factors of farming. To the farmer it 

 should seem as important to attend to the selection of 

 the right type of crop, to analyse relative costs, to com- 

 pare marketing and transport methods and charges, 

 as it is to study manuring and plant-breeding From the 

 point of view of the nation, there is a clear duty to see 

 that every industry is functioning so as to co-operate 

 with the others in reaching the highest possible degree 

 of national welfare. Economic research to attain this 

 end was never so much needed as to-day, when a large 

 proportion of the lands of the country has passed into 

 the hands of purchasers at values greatly inflated by 

 expectations that the present good times will continue 

 indefinitely, when experts tell us that the world as a 

 whole is faced with the spectre of diminishing returns 

 in agriculture, and when moral duty summons up every 

 effort to rescue millions in the older lands from the 

 brink of starvation. While New Zealand has been borne 

 along on a constantly rising general level of prices 

 of farming products, politicians have rarely recog- 

 nised any obligation to analyse the organisation of our 

 natural resources and the industries directly founded 

 on them ; but if, as now seems likely, we are to be faced 

 with a continuous fall in the prices of our produce, it 

 is essential to well-being that we should know how to 

 utilise these resources in the best possible way. Not the 

 least useful lesson to be drawn from comprehensive sur- 

 veys of an industry like the following is the warning 

 written plain in its history that a present wave of 

 prosperity, however buoyant it may seem, should not be 

 regarded as permanent or even likely to last through 

 the experience of an ordinary business life. 



