Nine hundred cockerels of indigenous Light Sussex X indigenous, Rhode island red X indigenous, Black Australorp X indigenous, white Leghorn X indigenous and three pure imported breeds were reared from day old to 5 months of age, and growth rates, food consumption, feed conversion, killing out percentages and costs of production measured at the 6 week and 20 week stages. The imported breeds gave the best results throughout, the Light Sussex X indigenous and Rhode Island red X indigenous were superior to the indigenous, and the Black Australorp X indigenous and white Leghorn X indigenous were inferior to the indigenous. The production of meat from imported, Light Susses X indigenous and Rhode Island Red X indigenous cockerels at 16 and 20 weeks of age was a profitable undertaking, but it was not possible to avoid incurring a loss in the rearing of indigenous, black Australorp X indigenous and White Leghorn X indigenous birds.

This article was written at the invitation of the Editor of this journal. In earlier correspondence the point was made that the author had been "having second thoughts on the decline of some departments of agricultural economics which were of a more applied nature" and that "this year will mark a decade since the emergence of Earl Heady's massive tome", Economics of Agricultural Production and Resource Use, Prentice-Hall, Inc. New Jersey, 1952. The suggestion was made to the author "that perhaps you could review developments in the field of production economics since the birth of the Heady opus". Preferably, the article should be viewed as critical of certain developments in our profession, the origins of which extend back in history prior to the lives of any living person and horizontally in our society beyond the realms of production economics and, for that matter, far beyond the social science disciplines. The need is for criticism of a development and not for criticism of the people who participated in the development.

IF New Zealand is to provide higher living standards for an increasing population it will have to speed up its rate of exporting. Obviously increased exports must come mainly from the agricultural industry. With a 2% per annum population increase, and to provide a 2% per annum increase in living standards, we will probably have to increase our export income by somewhere around £15 million per annum. The farming industry has the potential to provide greater exports. A recent conference of the Institute of Agricultural Science estimated that the application of known methods of production on all our farms would lead to an increase of 80% in production above the present level. This is a reflection of the great advances which have been made in New Zealand in scientific research where, in some fields, we lead the world. However, setting potential targets is only the first step. In order to turn an 80% potential into a 4% per annum rate of growth, we will need constructive economic policies to encourage increased exports. This means an expanded economic research programme to supplement the vigorous scientific research mentioned above. The present article describes the programme of economic research which has now been put in train at the Agricultural Economics Research Unit recently established at Lincoln College.

Reviews the present position and discusses future policies, especially whether selection working in the high forests, producing high-quality timber for export, should be replaced by quantity production for home needs. In the savanna, the attempt to grow forests on the worst soils, thus avoiding a conflict with agricultural interests, has proved unsound.