82 Agriculture and the Community. 



has been that many farms are most uneconomically 

 arranged, and a great waste of land and labour is entailed. 



It is not likely that we shall have any great development 

 of farming on joint stock company lines which would be 

 the only way that private enterprise could operate in this 

 direction. The State could and should finance experiments 

 in this direction, so that reliable data could be got to guide 

 us to the best form of organisation for the industry. We 

 ought to have farms of i,ooo, 2,000, and even up to 10,000 

 acres undertaken by the State working through the County 

 Committees. I am aware af the practical difficulties in 

 the way. There would be the difficulty of securing the 

 necessary managerial and expert staff for the work. As 

 I have already pointed out we have not provided 

 opportunities for training men for such work, and it would 

 not be easy to find the right men. We should have to 

 begin with a few large farms and trust to the 

 opportunities of training the necessary men on these 

 farms for an extension of the work. That there would be 

 no lack of men willing to train seems evident from the 

 number of young people who train now with practically 

 no prospects of being absorbed in the industry. With the 

 prospect in front of them of an honourable career in the 

 public service we have every reason to believe that the 

 industry would prove attractive and that the authorities 

 would be able to bring a valuable draft of fresh blood and 

 new ideas to the industry. 



The third direction in which the Committees could find 

 useful work is in the reclamation of waste lands. 

 Obviously this is work which can only be undertaken on 



