RURAL AMERICA

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LII, Issue 37, 8 May 1931, Page 8

RURAL AMERICA

OVER-PRODUCTION CURSE.

FARM BOARD'S WORK,

AGRICULTURALIST'S VIEW,

Plenty of care is necessary when a I Government organisation gets to work on a programme aimed at stimulating prices for the benefit of the farmers, judging from the story told by Mr E. A. Flood, of Lincoln, Nebraska, an agricultural writer, who arrived in New Zealand by the Monowai from San Francisco. Mr Flood explained the effect of the Federal Farm Board in the States and recalled the work of the Brazilian Government, which had stimulated, coffee prices to such purpose that "the coffee-pot boiled over and the industry was swamped." "I don't know whether the Government is trying to do anything of the kind here," said Mr Flood, "but if it is, it should tread pretty warily." In the States, he said, production was not the trouble. They could produce miles more than they wanted. Over-production was the big curse and had led to the farmers asking for some kind of farm relief so that they could get higher prices. In their elections they insisted on the Government taking a hand, and sent in a number of politicians who, although they knew the farmers were all at ser with their ideas, got for them the scheme they wanted. A Farm Board. The Federal Farm Board was established accordingly about a year j and a half ago and got into its stride I after the first six months, undertaking to stimulate prices. Just as in Brazil, where the same sort of thing has been tried, the scheme in one respect was disastrous. It stimulated prices, but it stimulated over-produc-[tion too. 'j "If you go ahead and assist the farmer to get higher prices he responds by producing twice as much in the next season," said Mr Flood. "After all, you can go on buying radio and automobiles and silk stockings, and things like that, and use the lot; but I you don't use more wheat and butter than you need. Butterfat prices are now just half what they were a year ago. Did Good Work. Farmers had a big vote and they asked for the Federal Board, and got it, he said. The board had done a great piece of work, of course,* and the best it possibly could have done in view of its formation and status. But organised farm relief wasia difficult job, and had ruined, for instance, the coffee farmers of Brazil where the ■ Government had helped them to get £ higher prices and it had "bust" £ them. f "We have got the same thing in the :♦ States, especially now, with Russia, I Australia and the Argentine all pro- :* ducing big wheat crops. Over-pro-f duction is the biggest curse possible. |t Our machinery and efficient methods I and scientific agriculture produce too I much—that's all there is to it." g. \ Position in Middle West. _■ . 'f Told of the distress signals from I poverty-stricken farmers in the Statt es, echoes of which had reached New £ Zealand, Mr Flood said they had f plenty of farmers who thought they f. were poor and in distress and were t raising a terrible howl, but every one £ of them in the mid-west, where he * came from, had an automobile or two. radio, expensive clothes for their wives, and their children certainly at high school and probably most of them at college. They had all those things, said Mr Flood, but they were howling because they had not got so much money as they had a year ago. They did not know how well off they were. It was one of the things which he tried to bring home to them. Mr Flood himself was brought up on a farm and there was no question of his having any lack of sympathy with the farmers, but with bread lines and soup lines in the big cities and plenty of distress, farmers in the middle west were relatively well off. There was no real poverty among them. "They don't know what hard times are," he said. Controlling Production. However, through over-production, they were certainly getting far less income than they had in the past. The Federal Farm Board, although designed to stimulate prices, had recog- , nised very wisely the necessity for a [solution to over-production, and in ad-

1 dition to its main purpose it had for a secondary and very important one —the actual control of production. By propaganda and agricultural education it had endeavoured to get the farmers to produce a balanced crop [ and to manage their production in a way that would stem the tide. i