FARMERS COSTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 April 1938, Page 3

FARMERS COSTS

HANDICAP IN LABOUR MARKET. PROBLEM OF DEVELOPMENT. “The farming industry has now definitely reached the point where it is not possible for it to compete for the necessary labour when the 40-hour week and wages ranging from 16s to 20s a day are being offered by other employers, who, for the most part, are in a position to pass these charges on to the public in higher prices for goods,” said Mr V. W. Simms, the chairman at the annual meeting of the Northern King Country sub-provincial executive of the Farmers’ Union, in his report. Serious dissatisfaction had been expressed by many farmers throughout the provinces, he continued," in that they were being forced to contribute to the Unemployment Fund, and, in many cases, the money was being used to pay wages to workers at rates considerably in excess of those which the farmer was able to pay his own employees. "If farming is not lifted from this position of inferiority, the question arises as to where the next generation of farmers is to come from,” Mr Simms said. “At the moment I think it is true that there is very little inducement to take up farming, and break in land, as most of us did in the past, owing to the present high cost of development.

“Quite a new situation has arisen in that the present Government seems to have set its face against what was the principal inducement to young men to take up land—that is the prospect of the freehold title to land and a measure of independence.”

The impossibility of economically improving partly-developed farms under the present high costs was stressed by Mr S. Riddle. He urged that in the national interest further development work of this nature should be encouraged by some form of subsidy. A motion proposed by Mr Riddle was carried, that the Government be asked to reimburse the farmer for increases in costs which had occurred in the development of farms as a result of legislation.