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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 79

A State Farm that is not a Financial Failure

A State Farm that is not a Financial Failure.

It is of Ruakura State Farm that I wish to speak at present, with the object of doing what I can to make the public generally, and through there our Parliamentary representatives, realise the national value of the work that is being done there. I have re- page 11 cently paid a visit to this institution, whose development I have known and watched from its earliest beginning some twelve years ago. During that period an enormous amount of work has been successfully accomplished in bringing what was originally for the most part a second-class swamp land into its present good order and cultural condition. There is an impression abroad that this has been done at considerable cost and loss to the public funds. Ruakura and other State Farms in the North Island have been referred to in public as having proved "financial failures." With regard to Ruakura there could not be a more mistaken impression. Of course the indirect returns from such institutions in the shape of the increase of agricultural knowledge derived from experimental work, and the example to the farming community of up-to-date methods of farming conducted on scientific lines, governed by practical experience—these great and valuable public services are not to be measured by a comparison of figures in an account book.