The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, DEC. 16, 1946 FARMER AND COMMUNITY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 63, 16 December 1946, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, DEC. 16, 1946 FARMER AND COMMUNITY

TO the general public it may appear that matters of interest exclusively or mainly to farmers are discussed at annual conferences of those engaged in primary industries, such as the conference of the Federated Farmers recently held at Wellington. When applied to some avenues of discussion this belief may have some validity. But most emphatically it has not when matters of farming economics of the primary industries are essentially the base economics of New Zealand. Hence, when conferences ar£ found talking at length about farming" economics as often happens, matters of wide and general public interest are being discussed. It is necessary to. point this out since efforts are made with deliberation to suggest that the economics of farming are something that applies to farming.exclusively, and not to the community as a whole. A glaring instance of this occurred recently when a trades uniqh official attempted to make the point that the Government’s decision to transfer to the consolidated fund the cost of subsidising the local, market for butter and cheese represented a gift of a cool £1,500,000 to the dairy farmers at the expense of the community. Other recent examples have been warnings from lead'ers in the trades union movement that any increase in this season’s dairy prices will be followed by demands for more wages in the field of industrial labour .All these attempts to separate the economics of the primary industries from those of the community avoid the fact that the well-being of the farmers is the first essential in the well-being of New Zealand. When applied to the matter of returns to the producers this enlarges the question to one of whether the farmers are superficially well off, or sufficiently well off to promote the interests of New Zealand. At the present time the evidence is that the farming industry as a whole is not sufficiently well endowed to promote its own interests or those of the country as a whole. The answer to the question of the prosperity of the farmer is not to be found with the man farming the better-class lands, though with him it is true that high labour costs detract from maximum use of lands. But it is in the. case of second-class and third-class lands that the question of the prosperity of the farmer takes on poor shade. It is there that the disproportion between the rise in internal costs and the rise in returns stands out most glaringly. This point is being forcibly put forward at farmers’ conferences as a fundamental in farming economics, and it is one that in its own interests the community should heed. ;