Description
Author: Bob Brockie
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 01/01/2015
Imprint: NZ CARTOON ARCHIVE
ISBN: 9780958232074
Farming has been the core of the New Zealand economy, and a very large part of it, from the arrival of the first European settlers in 1840. The country’s fortunes have waxed and waned as wool prices peaked and troughed, before and after refrigeration revolutionised the economics of sheep farming, as co-operatives turned butter and cheese into actual gold, as recyclable pine forests turned difficult terrain to profit, as deer were plucked from the bush to establish the world’s first deer farms, as our survival as a nation depended on the terms negotiated for Britain’s entry to the EEC. From the sheep farming pioneers to 21st century dairy farmers, it has been the country’s rural community that has provided the critical ‘backbone’ to New Zealand’s prosperity. Every year, when the statistics are in, it is farming in its diverse and evolving forms that makes by far the greatest contribution to the NZ economy and our way of life. For as long as cartoonists have put pen to paper in New Zealand, farming and the rural life have been favourite subjects – from hard-edged comment about the importance of farming to affectionate nudges at rural mores and stereotypes. Down on the Farm includes a short, snappy Introduction followed, in six sections, by the perceptive, telling and funny insights of New Zealand’s leading cartoonists of earlier generations like Gordon Minhinnick, Nevile Lodge and Eric Heath’s and today’s Murray Ball, Tom Scott, Rod Emmerson, Malcolm Evans and Chris Slane. There is also a fascinating ‘Key Dates in New Zealand Farming History’ section.
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