The following interview is reprinted from the JOHANNESBURG AND RAND ANNUAL dated Easter 1931. The photograph of Mr Walker is from the same periodical.
The Policy and Principles of the
Walker Fruit Farms
INTERVIEW WITH MR ARTHUR WALKER,
Chairman and Managing Director of the Walker Fruit Farms and Founder of the Transvaal Apple Industry.
BY OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
In this interesting interview Mr. Arthur Walker, the founder of the apple industry of the Transvaal, gives us for the first time an important interview upon the policy and principles of the Walker Fruit Farms, and shows us how they may be applied successfully in any land development scheme for the mutual benefit of both the company and the settlers concerned.
The Walker Fruit Farms are situated on the main road to Vereeniging, some eighteen miles south of the City of Johannesburg, and some twelve miles from Meyerton and five miles from Grasmere station on a loop or local line. This property was purchased by the Company some fourteen years ago and comprised the freehold farm of Faraosfontein No. 214, consisting of 3,367 Morgen. In the years that have elapsed the Company have laid out on the former barren, wind-swept veld, the largest apple orchards in the Union comprising over four miles of trees, and have also developed a very successful cider industry in the Homestead Factory. Recently, the Company have turned their attention to pig farming, and the laying out of commercial timber plantations. THE EDITOR
Readers of this ANNUAL would like to know something about the policy you have adopted on the Walker Fruit Farms.
With pleasure. At the outset I may say that twenty-five years ago when I first began to take a practical interest in Land Development, I saw clearly that there must be certain "Principles of Land Development" which should be as faithfully followed as those fundamental principles which operate in the realm of Medicine, Law and Engineering, etc.
Accordingly, I set myself to find out what these principles involved and how they could be put into practical operation, After over twenty years' experience in dealing with the most complex and difficult Land Problems, I had the opportunity, some five years ago, of applying these principles of Land Development which I had evolved to the practical development of the Walker Fruit Farms. My own ideas upon this matter may be summed up in a few simple sentences, although they are the result of many years' work and concentrated thought upon almost every phase of the Land Development Problem.
What do you consider the most important factor in any Land Development Scheme?
Well, in the first place all Land Development Companies should establish Demonstration Plots, or Experimental Fields themselves before inviting any prospective settler to take up ground with the object of specialised farming. This may mean several years of work at little or no profit for the Development Company. But the result will be that the Company will then be in a sound position to recommend certain methods of farming which the new settler may profitably pursue. In short, the prospective settler, should always be part and parcel of the Company's enterprise by planting out and developing the same kind of trees as has been found to be the most profitable and satisfactory by the Company's own technical and expert staff. That is to say, the policy of any Company, which is engaged in the development of Land for farming or for Ready-Made Small Holdings, should be formulated on the principle that what is correct for the Land Development Company is likewise the correct policy for the individual settler. I might put this idea in a homely phrase that what is considered good enough for ourselves, should be considered good enough for the intending settler.
