MARKETING PRODUCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 164, 1 October 1927, Page 25 (Supplement)

MARKETING PRODUCE

EFFICIENCY OF POOLS CANADA SATISFIED Farmers in Canada have realised that they cannot succeed in the modern world without large combinations, said Mr. A. J. McPhail, president of the Canadian Co-operative Wheat Pools, the central selling agency' for Canadian wheat, in an interview with a “Financial Times” representative recently. Mr. McPhail explained that the organisation of which he is the head was established in 1923 by the Western Canadian farmers themselves to enable them to merchandise their wheat at a profit. Farmers in the pool bind themselves on a five-year contract to deliver all their wheat for sale through the organisation. The farmers, he said, had never secured a fair price for their wheat outside the war period until the last three years. Tie would not say, however, that the co-operative pool system had been responsible for the improvement. Up to 1923 the farmers never received more than a dollar a bushel. In 1924, the first year of the operation of the pool, they received 1 dollar 66 cents. The organisation controlled 55 per cent, of the total Canadian wheat crop. Asked if the pool system could be successfully applied to farming in other countries, Mr. McPhail said that the system of co-operative marketing and scientific merchandising should be applicable to most farm produce. It had been applied in Denmark, so why not elsewhere? Mr. McPhail stated that in his toEir of this country and Europe studying the wheat markets, he had been impressed with the up-to-dateness of the facilities for handling wheat in most of our big importing centres and on the Continent. More Attention to Breeding. —-“If more attention was paid to breeding production could easily be increased by about 25 per cent, in six years, with no more animals being milked than at the present time. If farmers could be induced to lean a little more on their own resources, and to profit by the experience and advice of those who had studied the industry, they would soon be in a much better position financially, for the reason that increasing production without increasing cost would mean more money' in the pockets of the spending public. Slump periods would then soon be things of the past. Surely an industry that returns about £18,000,000 annually is worth giving of our best to assist.” These views were expressed by Mr. J. Kyle, of Aokautere, Palmerston North.

THE SUN’S CROSSWORDS