AUSTRALIAN DAIRYING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 178, 10 November 1941, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN DAIRYING

INDUSTRY'S GRAVE PLIGHT

LOWER PRICES, HIGHER COSTS

"The position in the Australian dairy industry is causing alarm, and the 1 deterioration in the butter producers' prosperity is daily becoming more acute." This statement was made by the. general secretary of the New South Wales Primary Producers' Union, Mr J. L. Shute, when referring to an address by Mr J- G. Crawford, Rural Bank economist, in which, he said that the average price received for farm products had declined 25 per cent in the 10-year period ended 1938-39 as compared with the 10year period following the last Avar. "The plight of butter producers is much graver than Mr Crawford's figures, taken on their face value, would appear to indicate," said Mr Shute. "It is safe to say that no section of the farming community has suffered so severely from the conditions arising out of the war as the dairy industry, which is the victim of low prices, lost markets, and rapidly-rising costs. "The export market for butter has been seriously crippled and the prospects of recovery after the Avar cannot be regarded as promising. But the sharp drop in export is only one of the economic ills submerging the dairy industry and depressing farmers into poverty." Mr Shute said that the price of butter in the Australian market was fixed at a rate much below the cost of production, and what waa true of butter was unfortunately equally applicable to the milk industry. Many of the milk suppliers to the metropolitan market were in a desperate situation, often unable to meet domestic obligations, with the result that numbers were heavily in delft. Cost of Equipment "One of the most serious aspects of the lamentable conditions is the steep rise which has occurred within the past two years in the cost of necessary farm equipment," said Mi Shute. "The rise in indispensable requisites has simply sky-rocketed, and the consequence has been a forced neglect of cultivation, with a resultant loss of land fertility, which is proving ruinous to the farmer and ultimately will be disastrous to the State. "While the dairy farmer has lost a large share of the overseas: market, extensive inroads have been made in the sale of butter in Australia by the competition of margarine. Unless dairy farmers are se, cured adequate prices for their products by Government authority, the plight of large numbers of them will be indeed desperate." Mr Shute added that he fully endorsed what Mir Crawford had said, ancl unless assistance was given-to the farmer, it was hopeless to expect His standard of living to be bettered, much less to attract more people to settle on the land.