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 Conference,
 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.