288 WHEAT PRODUCTION IN NEW ZEALAND 



The farm labour problem has received special con- 

 sideration throughout, because I am constrained to 

 believe that a solution of this question would go far to 

 solve the whole wheat question. Though the present 

 treatment is preliminary and part of a discussion of 

 the general wheat question, I have been tempted, as one 

 who has spent much time among rural workers, to 

 suggest some improvements; and from a careful study 

 of the whole question, combined with practical experi- 

 ence, have arrived at certain conclusions of fundamental 

 importance, which are set out in Chapters III. and VIII., 

 and are supplemented below.* 



In our treatment of problems connected with successful 

 cultivation of the soil, we have still many questions to 

 investigate. The suitability of different manures to New 

 Zealand soils is, rightly speaking, a matter for the agri- 

 cultural chemist, whose conclusions should form the 

 hypotheses with which a treatment of the question in 

 a work of this kind should commence ; for the economist, 

 as such, is concerned with the physical and natural 

 sciences, only in so far as the conclusions arrived at by 

 these affect his premises and deductions. 



On the problems of fallowing and irrigation, I had 

 collected much information from experimental farms in 

 the United States of America and Victoria. As was shown 

 in Chapter III., fallowing is important in New Zealand, 

 and experience in the United States of America supple- 

 ments the important deductions made in the treatment 

 given in that Chapter. Experiments carried out in 

 California, where the so-called system of "dry" farming 

 is in operation, are of particular importance to the dry 

 regions in Central Otago, and attention to this question 

 there would be well repaid. Irrigation is also a problem 

 of vital importance, in that portion of the wheat growing 

 area known as the Canterbury Plains. Although several 



Seepage 291. 



