BUTTER PRICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 April 1921, Page 7

BUTTER PRICE.

(To the Editor.) Sir,- —The report of the Palmerston North meeting of butter producers and the official statement of the National Dairy Association in your issue of the 31st ult., re the decontrolled price of butter, makes interesting reading, but to the consumer and the unfortunate housewife striving to make both ends meet and to rear her family, to whom butter is an absolute essential, the intention of the butter producers to extort, if permitted to do so, no less than 2/6 per lb for their produce can only cause dismay. On perusing the carefully camouflaged report, etc., one finds certain salient points worthy of consideration. The butter producers’ representatives state that “they have the right to expect fair terms in comparison with returns available from milk supplied for other purposes,” and mention dried milk at 2/9£d per lb butter fat as a case in point, also city milk supply. In the first case they refer to Glaxo, and whatever the proprietors of Glaxo, and whatever returns are only available to a few farmers in the Waikato district, and the price does not affect New Zealand dairymen beyond that? City milk is always sold at a higher rate than is paid by dairy companies. If the butter producers are envious of these returns, a few weeks on a city milk run would soon show them that the money is harder earned than their own. The argument of the butter producer to be placed on all fours with other branches of the dairying industry is, however, no new thing. At one time, during the earlier stages of the war, cheese was a better paying proposition than butter, and certain of the butter producers -had the effrontery to suggest that an equalisation fund be established by means of pooling cheese and butter returns, the argument being, presumably, that each branch of the industry milked cows. Naturally this project fell through, and presumably butter became the more payable proposition. Did the cheese producers ask the butter* producers to equalise then? They did not. Did the butter producers come forward with their old argument and offer to share with the cheese men f / Most emphatically they did not. Nothing was ever further from their thoughts. And now the pendulum has swung back again, and we find the butter producer with the same old arguments and the same old squeal, and it comes from the butter factories who have had every opportunity to obtain dual plants in the past, and thus to be in a position to manufacture whichever commodity is the more payable, but who have preferred a big pay-out and stagnation to spending some of their recent large profits to bring their plants up-to-date. The report goes on to say that there has been widespread misunderstanding re the 6d per lb subsidy, and tfiat if the Government had not eased the price by the subsidy the retail price would have been 2/9 or 2/10. There certainly is a widespread misunderstanding on the part of the butter producers if they think that the public are blind to the 6d subsidy, and all about it, and as regards the price ever reaching 2/9 or <2/10 that is simply a mis-statement. The Imperial Government purchased the exportable surplus of New Zealand butter. That is to say, they engaged to take what New Zealand did not require for home consumption. What, then, was the value of the butter en bloc in New Zealand all pooled together and offered to the people of New Zealand at the best price obtainable locally? Not very much, certainly. The producers would have done well to net 1/6. However, the deal was never carried out on those lines, and the Premier allowed the producers to obtain a local price which, with the 6d subsidy, placed butter sold on the local market on equal terms with that exported. But the subsidy, though granted by the Government, was in reality a levy on the whole of the population of New Zealand for the benefit of one particular class, and that class only, the butter producer. The subsidy now ceases, but not the desire for it, and perhaps the most interesting or amusing part of the report of the Palmerston meeting is the fact that it was resolved unanimously “to meet the public half way” by arranging for the retail price for the future to be 2/6 instead of 2/3 per lb. In other words, it simply means that as they can no longer get a 6d subsidy they will be content with a 3d overcharge if they can get it! Half a loaf is better than no bread! Another interesting point was the reference to the parity question. It will <be remembered that a former deputation of butter producers to the Prime Minister was particularly urgent upon this question, and demanded that the New Zealand price should be on a parity with the London one. The Prime Minister concurred. At that time it suited the butter prodiicer to ask for this ruling, but now, when butter in England is not nearly the same proposition, they say “that the butter parity is not & question at this time.” Quite so; butter is down in London, and the New Zealand butter men wish to charge the public over London parity, so let’s say nothing about it! Pure camouflage. As regards the National Dairy Association’s statement threatening that pro-? ducers will divert their milk or dry off their -cows, the threat is entirely an idle bluff, as anyone ,who understands the industry knows very well, the simple reason being that in practically every case the producer can do neither except to his own detriment. The above will give the public some idea of the position, and the public should’ remember that they can dictate the price they will pay, and for their own sake the public should protest, otherwise they may find that the prices they have to pay for dairying and other commodities in the future are simply dictated by bosses not unlike those of a Trust. Finally, for the public information, 11b butter fat produces 1 l/3rd lb butter, so that at 2/3 per lb, the wholesale price of the producer, the actual amount netted per lb butter fat is no less than 3s per lb, or 2£d above even Glaxo, previously referred to.—l am, etc., CONSUMER. New Plymouth, April 1, 1921.