THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “Public Service,” WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 1943. FARMER & STATE CONTROL

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 32, Issue 3291, 21 July 1943, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “Public Service,” WEDNESDAY, JULY 21, 1943. FARMER & STATE CONTROL

Advocacy of the principle or co-operation naturally finds a place in the platform adopted by the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, and it asks for “the return to the farmers, under co-opera-tive producer control, of the processing and marketing of all their own produce.” But an opportunity for the dairying branch to extend the principle to have been lost when the Government, after discussion with the Dairy Board, set up a factory at Auckland, and purposes erecting two more in other parts of the Dominion, for the dehydration of butterfat. The plant in the north is operated by the Internal Marketing Division, and presumably it will control the additional plants. Would it not have been possible for the co-operative dairy companies themselves to co-operate in order to develop this extension of the industry? That would have kept the processing system, within the control of the industry. As things are it seems to have allowed State control to invade its special territory. If the development is regarded as being of purely a temporary nature—a war measure—then the course adopted could be understood, but if dehydration is likely to become an established part of the dairy industry, then the supplanting of co-operation by State control is very difficult to understand.

RED CROSS WORK

The recent meeting of the Dominion Council pf the New Zealand Red Cross \ Society has served to emphasise the widespread and far-reaching character of the parent organisation. From its remote origin as a mission of mercy in the battlefields of war it has grown, flourished, and branched out into a great world organisation with activities as important and beneficial to the welfare of communities in peacetime as in wartime.. One of the most important topics discussed by delegates to the Dominion Council meetings was that of post-war relief, a. task which by universal consent is likely to present immense problems calling for world cooperation in the cause of impoverished and suffering humanity. It is encouraging to note from the reports of th.e proceedings that the society is making early preparation for participating, in the name of the New Zealand people, in this great humanitarian effort.