Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1938. DAIRY PRODUCE PRICES.
QN a number of occasions recently the Prime Minister has had something to say about infallible or would-be infallible critics of the Government’s guaranteed price policy. There are a good many people—dairy farmers and others—however, who lay no claim to infallibility, but would very much like to have from Mr Savage or another accredited Government spokesman a plain statement of the basis on which it is proposed to determine the prices to be paid for dairy produce as time goes on.
In the extent to which it has thus far developed, the position is defined clearly enough. The present Government went to the country on a policy of stabilising the finance of dairy farmers by averaging the returns obtained lor dairy produce in good years and in bad years. In the first year of the operation of the guaranteed price, however, the amount paid out exceeded the actual returns by some £300,000 and this loss was borne by the State. In the present year 1 there is a surplus in the dairy expoit account and this is to be distributed. Mr Savage stated at Stratford on Thursday evening that the Minister of Marketing (Mr Nash) expected to be able to announce at the National Dairy Association conference at New Plymouth next week “just what amount would be distributed, and how it would be distributed.”
The outlook beyond that point remains somewhat obscure. At Stratford, Mr Savage said, no doubt quite accurately, that: —
Everything considered, the farmers’ criticism of the Government’se plan is largely in regard to the alleged inadequacy of the present guaranteed prices to meet dairy farm and dairy factory costs.
Having observed further that there was great difficulty in ascertaining farm costs and that the Government invited representative organisations and groups of dairy farmers to submit reliable farm cost figures, the Prime Minister added:—
There is no desire on the Government’s part to do other than live up fully to its price-fixing formula, which actually takes account of farm costs.
Mr Savage also reiterated his earlier statement that if the farmers thought they could get a fairer price by giving their evidence as to costs to a tribunal with a Supreme Court Judge as president, the Government would not turn down that proposal.
With its other features of interest, the Prime Minister’s .statement embodies the specific claim that the Government’s price-fixing formula “actually takes account of farm costs.” Since this is the all-important point on which so much depends, it is surely not too much to ask that the price-fixing formula for which that claim is made should be disclosed in its details.
The position taken up, not only by dairy farmers, but by all farmers who rely wholly or mainly on export trade, is that it is unfair and inequitable that they should have to meet high and increasing internal costs at times when the prices obtained for export produce are stationary or are falling. Farmers, in a word, demand that they should not be penalised, as compared with the rest of the community, by having to meet high costs when their incomes are at a low level.
If the Prime Minister perceives a means of averting this injustice and the disturbance of our total national economy that it occasions, he should have no hesitation in disclosing his plans to that end. He will, in that event, have propounded a solution of the most perplexing economic problem by which this country .is faced. The magnitude of the problem is indicated in the fact that of a total national production of material commodities in 1936-37 of £m136.1, farm products were valued at £m88.4. Farm production, that is to say, amounted to approximately two-thirds of the total production. Exports, consisting almost solely of farm products, amounted in the same year to upwards of £m6o. They thus constituted roughly 44 per cent of the total material production.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 June 1938, Page 6
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656Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1938. DAIRY PRODUCE PRICES. Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 June 1938, Page 6
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