DAIRY GUARANTEE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1939, Page 4

DAIRY GUARANTEE

PROPOSAL BY MINISTER SAME PRICE IN 1939-40. BOARD CHAIRMAN OBJECTS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, February 25. The statement that the Minister of Marketing, Mr Nash, was desirous of extending the present guaranteed prices of butter and cheese for a period of one year from the expiration of the present season was made by the chairman of the Dairy Board Mr W. E. Hale, at the conference of No 1 Ward of the Dairy Board in Morrinsville. According to the expression of opinion at the meeting, the prices will not be acceptable for the 1939-40 season. Mr Hale said he had interviewed the Minister on the matter, and, though .very careful consideration of Mr Nash’s viewpoint had been given at a conference of the Dairy Board, the National Dairy Association, the South Island Dairy Association and the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, that conference had decided that it could not agree to vary the standards recommended by the 1938 Advisory Committee. The Minister’s suggestion that the guaranteed prices should remain the same as for the present season could not be accepted.

The opinion was expressed by the chairman that a suggestion made by the Minister that an expert committee should consider farm costs, if put into effect, w.ould simply reopen an inquiry that was thoroughly dealt with last year. ■

They had conveyed to the Government the viewpoint that it should accept the standards set up by the 1938 Advisory Committee with known increases as to costs. If this were acceptable to the Government, it would put price fixation on a 'sound basis. He was of the opinion that the guaranteed price Committee, Professor .A. H. Tocker, Mr C. P. Agar, and Mr W. Marshall, should not be changed. No sound reason had been given by the Minister why the recommendations of the committee should not be taken as a basis again this year, said Mr S. A. Ferguson, chairman of the South Auckland Dairy Association. A remit was adopted, to be forwarded to the Dominion Dairy Conference in Wellington in April, “that while appreciating that the guaranteed price, as fixed by the Government this season, was not in accordance with the finding of the sub-committee which took into consideration all aspects of factory and farm costs, this ward conference wishes to bring before the notice of the Marketing Department the continually increasing costs, both in the factory and on the farm, and requests that assistance be given to stabilise the same, or that, failing such stabilisation or reduction, full consideration be given to all costs when the price for next season is fixed.” .