The importance of farming in the region's economy is revealed by the high proportion in the Blenheim Employment District engaged in primary industry, 27·7 per cent, compared with the national figure of 16·06 per cent. During the period 1951–52 to 1959–60 the number of sheep shorn has increased by 22·17 per cent and of lambs shorn by 57·63 per cent, both rates being below their respective national rates. It is clear from the figures contained in the statistical table that in the 30-year period, 1921–51, the number of sheep declined in some counties or hardly increased in others. Following on the introduction of aerial topdressing the prospects have improved, but it is very striking that the increases in livestock numbers are concentrated in a few areas, so that Marlborough County has shown a 42·01-per-cent increase in sheep shorn and a 129·94-per-cent increase in lambs shorn. The figures for Kaikoura are respectively 25·03 per cent and 8451 per cent. The post-war development has therefore seen a greater differentiation occurring within the region and the focussing of development upon the richer and more favoured lowland areas.

The concentration of agricultural development in the lowland area helps one to explain the rapid increase, 52 per cent, of the urban population during 1951–61, most of the increase occurring in Blenheim, which grew by 69·56 per cent. The borough contains at least 42 per cent of the region's total population, but the inclusion of population in the immediate vicinity takes the proportion to almost 60 per cent. Whilst 26·05 per cent of the national labour force are engaged in manufacturing industries, the figure for Marlborough is only 16·66 per cent. Significantly, the proportion engaged in food-processing industries is a little above the national average, whilst the proportion engaged in clothing and textiles, metals and engineering is conspicuously below. Most of this employment is located in Blenheim, which acts also as the principal commercial centre for the region. In the period 1953–61 the total labour force increased by 7·14 per cent, well below the national average, but that employed in manufacturing increased by 25 per cent, which is equivalent to the national rate of increase. The region contains a small fishing and whaling industry and its industrial salt has a ready market within the Dominion.

The Marlborough region can be divided into three distinct parts: the back country, the plains, and the Sounds. The back country is composed of ranges, rising to their greatest elevation in the Inland Kaikouras (Tapuaenuku, 9,465 ft) and the Seaward Kaikouras (Manakau, 8,562 ft), which are largely tussock covered and extensively farmed in large sheep runs. The average area of holdings in Awatere county is 4,547 acres. The density of population is extremely low; Awatere county, 1·6 persons per square mile, cf., Marlborough county, 4·5, and the absolute numbers are negligible. The area is best considered as part of the South Island high country. Nevertheless, much of the original wealth of the district was founded upon these runs.

From the ranges the main rivers, the Wairau, Awatere, and Clarence, bring down their gravels and silt, and the largest expanse of plain that occurs in the region consists of the alluvial in-fill of the Wairau River. The Clarence is not responsible for any large alluvial plain. The remainder of the lowland area is found near the coast between Seddon (population 612, 1961) and Ward (population 218, 1961) and is associated with the alluvial deposits of the Awatere and rocks of the Quaternary period. In the southernmost part of the region a smaller area of Quaternary rocks projects out as a peninsula and is associated with a pocket of level land near Kaikoura. Obviously most of the region's population and economic activities are concentrated in these relatively small areas of plain.

Around Blenheim and Seddon mixed arable farming is the principal land use. Lambs are fattened and dairy cattle pastured, and cereals, peas, grass and clover seeds, vegetables, and flowers are cultivated. In 1960 a total of 16,452 acres in Marlborough and Awatere counties was devoted to the production of cereals and peas. Of this amount 4,592 acres were sown under peas and with this crop the region makes a significant contribution to the total New Zealand production. In addition, 5,849 acres of land were devoted to the production of wheat, and around Blenheim 351 acres were under vegetables for processing, 207 acres under potatoes, and 668 acres devoted to orchards and market gardens. The high number of sunshine hours, 2,400 hours at Blenheim, and the relatively low annual rainfall of 25·8 in. constitute favourable factors in the development of this type of farming. Sunshine and frequent strong drying winds provide suitable conditions for the production of salt by evaporation of sea water at Lake Grassmere, but varying weather conditions have brought annual production as low as 5,000 tons and as high as 20,000 tons. At Kaikoura dairying is somewhat more important, as is brought out by the figures for number of cows in milk per hundred sheep shorn, 1·81, and the fact that this small area contains 35·32 per cent of the dairy cows.

The third part of the region, the Sounds, derives its name from the drowned valleys which form a distinctive ria-like landscape that constitutes the main tourist attraction of the whole region. The Sounds have a higher rainfall (Picton averages 63·8 in. per annum) and were originally bush covered, being far less easily exploited than the tussock grasslands that were settled much earlier. Quite extensive tracts of bush remain in the Sounds and on the Bryant Range which separates the region from Nelson. Sheep farming is the main agricultural pursuit and some dairy farming is undertaken in the Rai Valley. The livestock figures for Sounds County show conspicuous downward trends; the number of cows in milk has fallen from 1,530 in 1921–22 to 222 in 1959–60 and, in the same period, the number of sheep shorn has declined from 190,712 to 134,116. And, with the exception of Picton Borough, the population of the Sounds area has revealed a similar downward trend. The heavy costs imposed by the difficulties of the terrain and the rapidity of second growth under the high rainfall conditions go a long way towards explaining the decline of the pastoral economy in the area.

Marlborough lies at the north-eastern end of the South Island between Tasman Bay and Cook Strait. A rectangular-shaped piece of territory, it is some 130 miles long and some 50 miles broad. The limits of the region correspond to those of the old provincial boundary and to the area contained with the four counties of Sounds, Marlborough, Awatere, and Kaikoura. Together with their interior boroughs, these counties form the basis for the collection of statistics. Blenheim (population 11,956, 1961) is the largest town of the region, which in 1961 had a total population of 27,957 (1·15 per cent of the New Zealand total population) of whom 2·60 per cent were registered as Maoris.

Since the First World War Marlborough has experienced the steady but unspectacular progress of a mature farming district and there has been little change in the outlines of the settlement pattern. The rural population has declined, except in the lower Wairau Valley, and the main trend has been the growth of Blenheim as the regional centre from 3,770 people in 1911 to 12,000 in 1961. The population of the provincial district was 2,300 in 1861, 6,145 in 1874, 16,000 in 1911, 25,700 in 1956, and 27,740 in 1961. Between 1911 and 1951 there was consistent outwards migration of population from Marlborough, but since 1951 there has been a slight gain by migration from other parts of New Zealand. Sheep numbers have remained stable since 1911 although fleece weights and the number of lambs have increased, as have beef and dairy cattle numbers. The only significant industrial development of recent years has been the Lake Grassmere salt works which utilises the high sunshine and low rainfall of the district for evaporating sea water to obtain industrial salt.

Those social characteristics of the population which can be measured reveal little that is distinctive to Marlborough. The patterns of religious adherence, age structures and birthplaces of immigrant settlers have shown little divergence from the New Zealand average during the past hundred years.

by Murray McCaskill, M.A., PH.D., Reader in Geography, University of Canterbury.

• Old Marlborough, Buick, T. Lindsay (1900)
• Marlborough—A Provincial History, ed. McIntosh, A. D. (1940).

The first European settlements in Marlborough were the shore whaling stations established by Sydney merchants in the 1830s, at Port Underwood and on Queen Charlotte Sound. Little knowledge of the interior was acquired by the whalers whose interests were essentially maritime, and the next European approach was overland from Nelson by way of Tophouse and the head of the Wairau Valley in 1842. In 1841 Tuckett, the New Zealand Company surveyor, in making a reconnaissance of possible sites for the Nelson settlement, had dismissed the Wairau Plains after a cursory offshore inspection. Had he known of the easy route from the head of Queen Charlotte Sound, Nelson might have been located there. In the event, the Wairau was to be settled as an “over-spill” from Nelson – caused not through pressure of population on the resources of the Tasman Bay area, but because those who possessed capital found it more profitable to invest in sheep grazing in the Wairau than in the agricultural development of their 50-acre “suburban” holdings near Nelson.

The impetuous and ill-advised efforts of the New Zealand Company's Nelson leaders to acquire the Wairau Plains as a site for the 150-acre “rural” holdings, led to the disastrous incident known as the Wairau “massacre” (q.v.) of 1843 – the only armed clash between Pakeha and Maori to occur in the South Island. The district was eventually purchased from the Maoris by the Crown in 1847 and added to the Nelson settlement. The pastoral “invasion” began immediately. In August 1847 Frederick Weld landed the first 2,500 sheep at Port Underwood, drove them across the Awatere River, and established at Flaxbourne the first extensive Merino sheep run in the South Island. Within three years the grasslands as far as the Kaikoura Ranges had been occupied by squatters to the accompaniment of those vast tussock fires (the annual “burn off”), which were to precede the Merino sheep everywhere in the South Island in the next decade. Fourteen-year leaseholds at nominal rentals confirmed a mere 50 or so runholders in control of the grassland areas of Marlborough. After Grey's cheap land sales regulations were proclaimed in 1853, large areas of the best pastoral country were made freehold at the minimum price of 5s. per acre. Because of its early start in sheep farming, Marlborough served as the principal “reservoir” of acclimatised Merinos for the stocking of the Amuri, Canterbury, and Otago tussock lands during the 1850s.

Agricultural settlement on the 150-acre freehold sections of the Wairau Plains expanded steadily after 1855 under the stimulus of rising prices for foodstuffs on the Australian goldfields. In 1861, of the overseas-born population of Marlborough, 66 per cent were English, 16 per cent Scottish, and 8 per cent Irish – a proportion almost identical with that of Wellington Province at the same time. In 1864 the Wakamarina Valley, at the head of Pelorus Sound, was briefly rushed by some 3,000 to 4,000 gold miners, but most of them soon passed on to the West Coast. Assisted immigration in the 1870s brought 1,300 people to Marlborough and slightly increased the Irish-born element in the population.

Large-scale sawmilling began in the valleys of the Sounds district in the late sixties, most of the timber being shipped to Wellington and Lyttelton but by the end of the century the timber camps had given way to dairy and sheep farms. Until 1900 close settlement in Marlborough had not spread beyond the very limited areas of the lower Wairau Plains, the valleys of the Sounds, and the Kaikoura Plain. The great estates on the tussock lands remained intact. In no other province of New Zealand did the land subdivision policy of the Liberal Government play such a large proportional role in promoting closer settlement. Between 1895 and 1915 22 estates, comprising a quarter of a million acres, were subdivided into some 540 farms and small grazing runs. The main areas affected were the middle Wairau and the lower Awatere Valleys, the increased settlement being apparent on the population map of 1911.

Pre-European Maori settlement in the Marlborough area was concentrated at bay heads in the Sounds and on the Kaikoura coast, but at the time of European occupation the number of Maoris had been greatly reduced by raiding parties from the North Island, and the tribes in possession in the eighteenth century had been virtually wiped out. Economic development in European times has followed a contrasted pattern in each of the four main areas. North of the Wairau River, which forms a remarkably sharp boundary between the dry tussock lands and the damp, forested hill country of the Sounds, development has been spasmodic, patchy, and in part based on impermanent resources. Whaling in Cook Strait in the 1830s gave way to small-boat building in the 1840s. Later there was small-scale gold mining and extensive sawmilling in the valleys, followed by widespread bush burning on the hills and the grazing of Romney sheep. In the past 50 years dairying and intensive fat-lamb rearing have become well established in the valleys, but there has been widespread soil erosion and reversion to scrub and second growth forest on the hills. Recently the Sounds have enjoyed greatly increased popularity as a holiday resort, especially for Christ-church and Wellington people. For example, in Sounds County in 1961 holiday baches outnumbered permanent dwellings by three to two.

The second area, the Wairau Plains, with 65,000 acres of fertile alluvial soil, has always been the economic heart of Marlborough and the largest centre of population. Since the 1860s it has been a stronghold of small- and medium-scale mixed farming. Before 1914 much barley, chaff, and potatoes were exported to the North Island, but in recent decades specialisation has been rather towards peas, lucerne, and grass seed. The third area, Kaikoura coastal plain, repeats some characteristics of the Sounds area: its higher rainfall, former forest cover, and its marine resources. There were whaling stations in the 1840s but agricultural settlement was slow until small swamp and bush sections were broken in by the settlers of Irish origin in the 1870s. Dairying and fat-lamb rearing were firmly established by the turn of the century.

The remaining area of Marlborough – the most characteristic Marlborough – is the vast tussock-covered expanse with low and uncertain rainfall between the Wairau Valley and the Seaward Kaikoura Range. This was the first important area of Merino sheep grazing in New Zealand, and the squatters who occupied it were instrumental in achieving separation from Nelson. Excessive burning and overgrazing by sheep and rabbits have severely denuded many parts of the lower country, while wild goats and deer have seriously damaged the plant cover of the higher country. Towards the coast and in the lower Awatere Valley, the former large freehold runs were subdivided at the turn of the century into small grazing runs and mixed farms. Corriedale sheep supplanted the Merino, and sown grasses and arable crops replaced the tussock. On steeper country Merino and half-bred sheep grazing still holds sway, but the remotest frontiers of sheep farming have retreated. The Molesworth run at the head of the Awatere Valley was abandoned by the lessee in 1938 and has since been managed by the Department of Lands and Survey in New Zealand's most extensive example of land restoration and conservation farming. Following suppression of the rabbit menace, cattle were introduced and there has been extensive aerial reseeding of depleted hillsides.

The “centralist” or anti-provincial group in the General Assembly, led by E. W. Stafford (himself a runholder in the Awatere Valley), secured the passage of the New Provinces Act, largely as a means of weakening the more powerful provinces. This Act made it remarkably easy for any disaffected outlying district to be made into a new province provided the General Assembly were agreeable. All that was required was a petition from two-thirds of the electors in an area of not more than 3 million acres and with a population of not less than 1,000 European civilians. In three instances, Marlborough, Hawke's Bay, and Southland, separation was achieved in this manner by thinly settled pastoral districts. The creation of such small, financially weak institutions helped to discredit and undermine the whole provincial system of government. At the census of 1861 Marlborough had only 2,300 Europeans but enjoyed the full panoplies of independent provincial status.

Provincial politics in Marlborough had a comic opera quality. There were intense personal rivalries, dissension between the small farmer and pastoral factions, and conflicts between Blenheim and Picton interests resulting in frequent changes of the provincial capital (at first Blenheim, then Picton in 1861, then Blenheim again in 1866). At various times there were separation moves in the Picton, Pelorus, and Kaikoura districts, and at other times strong support for re-annexation to Nelson Province. Appropriately, the visible symbols of Marlborough's factious provincialism – the council chamber and departmental offices – were destroyed by fires at Blenheim and Picton within a few months of the abolition of the provinces in 1876.

Formerly part of Nelson, Marlborough was proclaimed as a separate province in August 1859 under the provisions of the New Provinces Act of 1858. The manner of its establishment was characteristic of the “separatist” forces at work during the 1850s and 1860s within the original six provinces. With the spread of settlement, especially pastoral settlement, into outlying parts of the original provinces, complaints were made that although the distant parts contributed much revenue from land sales, they received little of the provincial expenditure. Furthermore, the outlying pastoral runholders were concerned at the growing influence of the small farmer and urban radicalism in some of the provincial governments. They sought to safeguard their occupation of large holdings by controlling the land regulations in their own districts. The best means of ensuring this was to create new provinces, the governments of which they were likely to control.

Marketing and price policies for New Zealand farm products are complicated. They vary among the products. The general trend has been away from free marketing towards varying measures of control and price support. This is a world-wide trend which shows no sign of being reversed. It is difficult for New Zealand, with only a few main products, to operate complete and continuing price-support measures against prolonged falls in prices. It has been possible, however, to shield the producer from the worst effects of price variations. The essential features of the schemes for the main export products are the limited amount of Government assistance, often merely a statutory blessing; the schemes are financed essentially from producers' money; and, in the main, the producers control the marketing of the product.

With products for local sale, such perishables as milk, potatoes, eggs, and some types of fruit present most difficulties. Since 1936 these products have been subject to varying degrees of control by a State Department or by a producer authority. The practical effect is substantially the same. At times there is a longing for the “good old days” of free marketing, and in one or two products “open markets” have been set up to try to bring the producer and consumer closer together. But this move is largely anachronistic in western countries. With people concentrated in cities and products coming often hundreds of miles, there is limited opportunity for direct contact between producer and consumer.

by John Vaughan White, B.A., Rural Economist, Department of Agriculture, Wellington.

Many agricultural products are produced only for local sale, although occasionally there may be small surpluses for export. The marketing of some is largely controlled; others are sold entirely by private trading.

Wheat

Wheat, the most important cereal, is the only farm product in New Zealand under a system of virtual State trading. A Wheat Committee, comprising representatives of the Government, the growers, the flourmillers, and the poultry-industry producers, disposes of all milling wheat at prices fixed by the Government and also arranges for imports of wheat.

Other Cereals, Seeds, Peas, and Linseed

There is no price control of these, which are sold by private trading. With barley for malting, oats for milling, and linseed, a system of contract growing, between the industries concerned and the farmers, ensures an adequate and regular supply of the required quality. There are some similar arrangements for peas and seeds, although many seed crops are grown as surplus pasture growth on the chance of a good sale.

Vegetables

Vegetables for canning or deep freezing are mainly grown on contract. Vegetables grown for the commercial markets are sold by auction, which, with climatic changes in supply, makes for violent price fluctuation.

Stone and Berry Fruits

These are marketed by auction and by direct purchase. There is no organised marketing system and no price control, but some berry fruits are grown on contract for processing.

Potatoes

Potatoes present a difficult marketing problem. Variations in yield lead to unforseeable gluts and shortages; and potatoes will not carry over from one season to the next. A shortage of potatoes noticeably affects the Consumer Price Index and can therefore be of great economic importance. Shortages also encourage excessive planting, with a possible glut the following year. There are very limited possibilities to export and import potatoes. In 1950 the Government established the Potato Board, with producer and grower representation. The Board contracts at agreed prices with growers for an estimated necessary acreage. It levies all suppliers to build up a fund. If there is a surplus, the fund is used to pay growers a minimum price sufficient to meet basic costs of seed, fertiliser, and cultivation. The Government does not subsidise the industry, but will, if necessary, guarantee its overdraft.

Tobacco and Hops

Tobacco is grown under contract to the tobacco manufacturers, who work through the Tobacco Board. The price is fixed by the Trade Practices and Prices Commission and is based largely on cost of production. Hops are not grown under contract, but the price is fixed in the same way as that of tobacco. The Hop Marketing Committee sells the crop.

Citrus Fruit

Locally grown lemons and oranges, but not grapefruit, are marketed through a Citrus Marketing Authority. There is no guaranteed or any other form of controlled price.

Honey

Honey production varies considerably with the season. In a normally good season there can be a substantial surplus for export. The marketing of honey is not strictly controlled, though there is a Honey Marketing Authority. Growers can sell where they wish, but all honey sold locally bears a levy of 1d. a pound, which the Authority uses as a fund to compensate any loss on exports. The Authority has to take any honey which growers are unable to sell and dispose of it, mainly by sales to institutions and by export. The retail price of honey sold locally is controlled by the Government.

Eggs

Egg marketing also has its special difficulties. Production fluctuates with the season. Eggs are perishable and, being an important item in living costs, are subject to price control. The Egg Marketing Authority, set up in 1953, tries to see that all districts have a constant supply of fresh eggs. This means adjusting prices over the year, moving eggs from one district to another, and, to ensure an adequate winter supply, budgeting for a surplus the season before. This surplus is pulped and most of it sold to bakers and pastrycooks.

Milk

Ninety per cent of New Zealand's milk is used in the manufacture of butter, cheese, etc. The remainder is sold locally. Selling milk needs careful and complicated organisation, for it must be supplied to almost every household. Supplies often come from a distance. The Milk Board which comprises representatives of the Government, producers, vendors, consumers, and local authorities, is the central authority. Suppliers are grouped into local cooperatives, which guarantee daily quotas to the Milk Board. Prices to producers, margins to sellers, and prices to consumers are all fixed.