THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1927. DAIRY EXPORT CONTROL.

Wairarapa Age, 15 March 1927, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1927. DAIRY EXPORT CONTROL.

In deciding to rescind “all resolution's and restrictions dealing with the fixing of prices” the Dairy Control Board clearly has done the right thing. The resolution should go far towards disarming the trading interests in Great Britain which have come to regard the board with keen hostility, and in some cases have carried their hostility to unreasonable and unjustified lengths. As a Wairarapa authority quoted in our news columns to-day points out, the position that has arisen for the time being in London is that New Zealand butter, is being to a great extent boycotted by the traders vdio. have in the past been largely responsible for its distribution. This is a state of affairs that must be remedied at the earliest possible moment. It is much more important that such a remedy should be found as will again ensure a clear market for New Zealand butter than that any attempt should be made to determine exactly how the present unsatisfactory situation arose, and how far the board should be held responsible for this •situation. Obviously, however, the board has only been awakened in the rough school of practical experience to the imperative necessity of conciliating and maintaining friendly relations with the powerful and elaborately organised commenrcial concerns upon which we must for the time at least continue to rely for the distribution of our butter in the United Kingdom. At an early stage in its .operations, the board was warned that it could not hope to deal in a cavalier fashion with the .British distributing agencies. Even if it be assumed that some sections of the British trade have passed the limits of fair fighting, it seems necessary as a matter of practical policy to recognise that the board is not in a position to dispense with the co-operation of these powerful commercial organisations. Our own view is and has been that the board should be content to make haste slowly. It is open to it to do a great deal of useful work by adopting much the same policy as has been adopted and carried successfully into effect by its companion organisation, the Meat Producers’ Board. The regulation of shipments should go far to avert such losses as have frequently been incurred by reason of the tempor--glutting of the British market. The board undoubtedly is in a position to render important services to the producers in negotiating freights and insurances and dealing with some other aspects of finance. At the same time, by methodical attention to grading and standards of quality, and by enterprising publicity, the board may do a great deal to secure for our dairy produce a stronger and more assured hold on the British market. The ultimate deevlppment of the policy of control will be much better determined by experience than by more or Jess rash experiments capable of prompting such unpleasant measures of retaliation as are now being experienced. The resolutions passed yesterday by the Dairy Control Board presumably mean that it intends henceforth to pursue a policy which, while fulfilling the objects with which it was created, will give British traders and distributors no reasonable ground for complaint. It is certainly not the desire of dairy fanners and others vitally concerned in thia country that the

board should allow itself to be overawed and dominated by British commercial interests, but it is plainly a matter of imperative urgency, not least to dairy producers, that means should bo found of ending as speedily as possible the conditions of boycott and commercial warfare now ruling on the London market.