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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 8 (February 1, 1933)
Productive New Zealand
Productive New Zealand
The million and a half of people who populate New Zealand have many worthy world's records to their credit, including the lowest infant mortality and the lowest death rate; but their national record of production for export is perhaps the most striking proof they have to offer of what can be done by a virile British stock planted in a country favourably dowered by Nature.
After less than a hundred years of occupation the statistics of the Dominion's primary production read like romance. The “farm population” constitutes one-fourth of the Dominion total, and of these the number of people engaged in farming is almost 140 thousand. This army of primary producers certainly have something to shew for their efforts. They occupy 43 million acres, run nearly four million cattle, keep half a million pigs, and nearly four million poultry, own over 30 million sheep and a quarter of a million horses. To help them in their work they keep over twenty thousand milking machines busy, morning and night, beating the lilt of the cowshed serenade, and, between-whiles, they drive four thousand agricultural tractors. The farmers of New Zealand crop 1 ¾ million acres, of which more than half is in turnips, oats and wheat, and they have planted 25 thousand acres of orchards. The average yield per acre is also something of a record—32 bushels of wheat, 40 of oats, 36 of barley, and 48 of maize. Developments in dairying have also been amazing. The average return of butterfat in 1930 was 218 lbs. per cow, or nearly 100 lbs. per cow more than at the beginning of this century.
From these resources and activities and aided by modern transport, including over 3000 miles of railways, productive New Zealand now exports annually about 3 ½ million hundredweight of butter and cheese (this being the second highest exporting country in the world for each of these products), over 200 million pounds of wool, eight million carcases of mutton and lamb, half a million hundredweight of beef, and thirty million feet of timber, besides substantial quantities of other products — animal, vegetable and mineral. In 1930 the export trade was valued at £45 millions, and the total value of Dominion production, both primary and secondary (excluding that from holdings of less than one acre, and home products), was almost £120 millions, or £80 per head of population.
The whole of the foregoing records provides a picture of production of which any country might be proud, and justifies the sanguine faith of New Zealanders in the ultimate bright destiny of this sunny, smiling land. And the whole of this amazing page 6 production is carried on in a country where intensive cultivation, as it is understood in older lands, is as yet hardly known, where the evils of secondary industry have little chance to exist, and where the natural beauty of the country — helped as much as hindered by the manifold activities of its people—lures lovers of Nature from other countries with an irresistible beckoning.
Goods Transport by Rail and Road.
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(1) The report is unanimous. Its unanimity is necessarily based upon give and take. Each side conceded to the other many points to which they attached weight, because they considered it more important to present to the Minister a body of agreed recommendations rather than to stress the natural and important points of difference. (2) The report covers a narrow field—the conveyance of goods traffic by road or rail—but although the field is limited, the body of recommendations must be looked at and treated as a whole. This follows naturally from the process of give and take, out of which these recommendations came into being. (3) When the railway companies earlier in the year drew public attention to the effects of the competition existing between the two forms of transport, they emphasised the fact that they aimed only at establishing an equitable adjustment of the balance of conditions as between the railway and the road transport industries, which is clearly essential to the co-ordination of transport in the public interest. Throughout the deliberations of the conference this aim has been kept in view by their representatives, and the result is clearly reflected in the findings of the conference. Neither party seeks to claim special advantages or to impose special burdens on the other. The ultimate aim of both is to secure a fair basis of competition as a necessary stage towards the attainment of the best co-ordination of function, and whilst the report does not purport to find a complete solution, it represents a carefully thought-out scheme which, regarded as a whole, represents a definite advance towards a sound basis of co-ordination. (4) The first duty of the conference was to consider the incidence of highway costs. Just how those costs should be borne has been one of the most difficult problems which the conference has had to solve, and its solution has involved a considerable modification of the principles originally adumbrated by the railway companies, and their assimilation with alternative theories advanced by the road representatives. The result, with its combination of franchise value, ton-mileage and petrol consumption as a measure of the use and wear and tear of the roads, forms a basis which the railway companies have indicated their willingness to accept. (5) The proposals with regard to the regulation and licensing of freight road vehicles follow a principle already adopted in the case of passenger transport. The conference have evolved a scheme which should best serve the public interest as a whole, whilst avoiding undue restrictions on the road haulage industry on the one hand and the ancillary user of road transport on the other hand. (6) An important part in the future development of the relations between road and rail is reserved for the Advisory Committee, representative of all the interests concerned, whose function it will be to advise the Minister on many points affecting the regulation and co-ordination of transport. This committee will, it is hoped, be in a position to ensure that those developments are guided along lines which will be in conformity with the best interests of the industry of the country as a whole.