PART I. 
OPENING SPEECHES, AGENDA AND 
PROGRAMME. 
CHAPTER I. 
OPENING SPEECHES. 
The opening meeting was held in the Memorial Hall at 10-15 a.m. 
on August 17th, 1926. 
HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT, in opening the Confer- 
ence, said :— 
Gentlemen,—It gives me the very greatest pleasure to welcome 
you here to Kenya Colony and Protectorate, and I am only sorry that 
you are meeting for the first time on one of our greyest mornings. I 
hope, however, that the Kenya sun will come out and shine upon you 
on subsequent mornings. We are very proud indeed to have this 
Conference in Kenya and hope you will take away with you a good 
impression of the Colony. 
This Conference is, I think, a very striking example of the growing 
belief which is manifest throughout the world at the present time in 
the value of co-ordinating agricultural research and of the increasing 
importance which is being attached to the scientific study of 
agricultural problems. It is a remarkable testimony to that growing 
belief that there are eleven governments represented at this Conference 
here to-day and that they stretch right up this side of Africa from 
South through Central Africa to Somaliland. 
I am very glad that the Conference is now actually assembled for 
1 know it has been very much in the thoughts of the present Secretary 
of State, Mr. Amery, for a long time past—in fact ever since he gave 
attention to Imperial affairs he has been deeply interested in Imperial 
agriculture. He was, after all, the pupil of Lord Milner and Lord 
Milner was, I think, the first leading British statesman to realise that 
the organised study of agriculture, the scientific study of agriculture, 
was one of the first of the Empire’s needs. 
Mr. Amery has, therefore, been most deeply interested in the 
Conference and has sent the following telegram: — 
Request you will convey to delegates of Agricultural 
Conference expression of my satisfaction that so representative an 
assembly has been possible and my conviction that their meeting 
will be of the greatest value in dealing with problems on which 
the prosperity of so many countries depends.