Ojala, Eric Mervyn

(1916– ).

Director, Commodities Division, Department of Economics and Social Affairs, Food and Agricultural Organisation, Rome.

Eric Mervyn Ojala was born at Auckland, New Zealand, on 16 September 1916. He was educated at Tauranga District High School and Auckland Grammar School before studying for the Agricultural Intermediate Examination at Auckland University College. He completed a master's degree in agricultural science at Massey Agricultural College in 1939 and then completed a B.A. in economics at Auckland University College in 1945. From 1946 to 1948 he did post-graduate work in agricultural economics at the University of Oxford. His first appointment was as an instructor in agriculture for the New Zealand Department of Agriculture, 1938 to 1942. After serving in the New Zealand Army for 18 months, he was appointed as an agricultural officer for the Defence Force (later Public Service) at Guadalcanal in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate to develop a progressive agricultural policy for the area. From 1949 to 1952 he was a rural economist in New Zealand, after which he spent three years as Deputy Chairman of the Research Council for the South Pacific Commission. Since 1956 Dr Ojala has been Regional Economist for Asia and the Far East for the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations stationed at Bangkok, and chief of the ECAFE/FAO Agriculture Division. He published Agriculture and Economic Progress in 1952.

Since 1959 the operatic tenor Colin Young (Wellington) has lived in Italy, where he sings under the stage name, Enrico Colli. He has travelled widely and has sung in Spain, Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Australia.