WAR AGRICULTURE

Grey River Argus, 8 June 1943, Page 5

WAR AGRICULTURE

Australia’s Plans

NEW SUBSIDY AND ARMY HARVEST SQUADS.

(Special to N.Z. Press Assn.) SYDNEY, June 6. A vegetable growing subsidy, which is to cost between one million ana two million pounds, has been planned by the Australian Federal Government. It is expected to apply mainly to those growers who are supplying service requii'ements. Most of these growers work under a Government contract. • This scheme is regarded as .anotner important step towards solving Australia’s food problems. Subsidies _or guaranteed prices, are already being paid for dairy produce, wheat and potatoes. Experts say that this subsidy for vegetables will remove the lajst of the price influences retarding fobd production. The other major factor in Australian food production, that of manpower, will partially be met by the release of service personnel for work in both the primary and secondary industries. Plans for the drafting of skilled men to rural industry include the following:—(1) The release from the services of farm station owners, as well as skilled rural workers; (2) the formation of a mobile corps of trained rural workers, aged under nineteen years, and therefore debarred from service in the operational areas. The Minister for the Army, Mr F. M. Forde, has announced that five thousand soldiers will be released temporarily, to form the nucleus of a harvest flying squad, who are to wherever there is a shortage o, seasonal labour. „ . During the next financial year targets for Australia’s agricultural cultivation will include one hundred and seventy-four thousand acres of potatoes, six hundred thousand bushels of blue peas, eight million bushels obarley, and seventy thousand acres of flax.