SHEEP FARMERS’ SERIOUS POSITION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3563, 16 November 1926, Page 3

SHEEP FARMERS’ SERIOUS POSITION.

PRICES BELOW PRODUCTION COST. Masterton, Last Night. Commenting on to-day’s wool sale in Wellington, Mr W. B. Matboson, vice-president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, said “At Hastings to-day a labour organisation handed to the press a resolution recommending the Alliance of Labour to ask the British workers not to purchase New Zealand meat as it was being produced by blackleg labour. The truth is that the average sheep-farmer in New Zealand is earning smaller wages than the butchers who are declining to help New Zealand to keep busy.' In Wellington to-day typical wool fetched 2d a pound less than last year. This not only means reduced wages for the sheep farmers, but a loss to New Zealand of millions of income as compared with last year, when the prices realised were below the cost of production in many cases. These two items of news are of serious import to every* one in New Zealand, for if export falls seriously below last year’s totals there will not he incomings to enable the average citizen to maintain his present standard of living. It is to be hoped that the man in the street will quickly become aware of the true position so that further losses may he guarded against.