G. H. Holford

Mr Holdford was a student at Lincoln from 1909-11 and was the second student in New Zealand to complete the agriculture degree course. He commenced work on the staff of Wright, Stephenson Ltd., being one of the first agricultural students to be appointed to a commercial position. He was later associated with the Canterbury Farmers' Cooperative Association, and later became associate editor of the "New Zealand Farmers' Journal." Subsequently he was appointed agricultural adviser to Imperial Chemical Industries, and was a director of the New Zealand Fertiliser Advisory Service. In 1935 Mr Holford was awarded the Bledisloe Medal.

George Holford died suddenly in Wellington on October 15th, 1946. Mr Holford was 56 years old when he died, and at the time held the position of Superintendent of Fertilisers, Department of Agriculture, Wellington.

Mr. Holford was a student during 1909-1911, and is now 45 years of age. After completing his College course he joined the staff of Wright, Stephenson and Co., being one of the first students to be appointed to a position in a commercial firm because of his training here. He then joined the New Zealand Farmers' Co-op. and later became Associate Editor to the "New Zealand Farmer," and then Agricultural Adviser in New Zealand to the Imperial Chemical Industries. Up till this time he lived in Christchurch, but at the beginning of this year he moved to Auckland as Director of the New Zealand Fertiliser Advisory Service.

But it is in his unofficial capacity that Mr. Holford has done most work for agriculture. He has a vivid, prolific and prophetic imagination, and has placed it wholeheartedly at the service of the country. He was closely associated with the movements that resulted in the foundation of large scale manurial experiments in Canterbury, the Agricultural Science Club, the Grasslands Conference, the Wheat Research Institute, the study of Rural Economics, the Green-keeping Research and irrigation in Canterbury. All these activities and many more he saw started, and as each came into being he pressed on to open up still further fields.

He is a well-known figure at every kind of meeting of farmers throughout the while length of New Zealand, and his vigorous method of pressing home new ideas makes him, in his own field, one of the leaders of Agricultural Science in the Dominion. Source: 1936 Canterbury Agricultural College Magazine 75-76.