Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1939. THE FARMER AND OTHERS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1939. THE FARMER AND OTHERS.

PROBABLY the essential interdependence of town and country is nowhere perceived and understood more, clearly than in a district like the Wairarapa, where rural and urban activities and interests are so directly and so obviously in contact. It may be assumed, therefore, that many people who are not farmers are keenly interested in the questions that are to be discussed at a mass meeting of sheep farmers to be held in Masterton on Wednesday afternoon next.

The meeting is to discuss the formation of a co-operative meat pool—a project which assumes added importance and significance on account of the restrictions Britain has imposed on her meat imports from the Dominions —and also the offer oi' the Prime Minister to extend the guaranteed price scheme to meat and wool. The desire of sheep farmers, and other farmers, of course, is to have their industry established on a stable footing, with, returns adequately balancing costs. . It should be recognised that this is not merely a legitimate aspiration, but that it must be satisfied, in farming industry and in other industries, if prosperity and welfare are to reign in the Dominion.

With industries established individually on a payable footing and in a, fair economic relationship one with another, the stage evidently would be set for general prosperity. It cannot be emphasised or understood too clearly that in the absence of this equitable balance in and between industries there can be no lasting prosperity, even for sections of the community which appear for the time being to be much more fortunately placed than others.

The position from which sheep farmers are endeavouring to find a way of escape is one in which the returns of their industry are being outpaced hopelessly by costs. As compared with pre-war conditions, it was computed recently, the average monetary returns of pastoral and dairying industry have increased by something over twenty per cent, but costs of various l kinds incurred by the farmer (not, of course, on the farm only) have increased in some instances by five times as much. The precise figure of increase in sheep farming costs cannot easily be determined, but there is conclusive evidence of a great and growing disparity between costs and returns to the detriment of the sheep farmer.

In some way this disparity must be overcome and the gap between costs and returns closed, or greatly narrowed, if production is to be maintained in New Zealand pastoral industry. Since market prices for export produce are beyond control, the two great factors to be considered are the efficiency of farming industry and the relative magnitude of costs which farmers must meet, but which individually they cannot control —costs, that is to say, which arise as charges for industrial, transport and other services of all kinds auxiliary to farming within the Dominion.

Sheep farmers in other parts of New Zealand who have recently discussed the position of their industry have agreed emphatically in declaring that they are entitled to relief from the burden of thefee internal costs. In general, too, meetings of sheep farmers have agreed that the best remedy in sight is the further raising of the oversea exchange rate.

It is argued that the position cannot be redressed by more efficient farming, for the reason amongst others that much of the added burden of costs is imposed off the farm and in ways over which the farmer has no control. It is contended very generally, too, that the payment of guaranteed prices for meat and wool,which would give the sheep farmer returns adequately covering his costs is impracticable.

Whether, as many sheep farmers contend, the further raising of the oversea exchange rate, making £lOO sterling worth, perhaps, 140 or 150 New Zealand pounds, instead of approximately 125 as at present, is at best a moot point. /The payment of guaranteed prices over and above the market prices obtained for exports must entail either taxation to a corresponding amount, or inflation. On account of the magnitude of the figures involved the payment of guaranteed prices for meat and wool is very commonly held to be impracticable. The raising of the exchange rate, however, would also entail inflation on a scale proportioned to the relief given to those engaged in export industry.

Moreover, while the initial effect of raising the exchange rate is to benefit sellers of export produce (by giving them a. larger share of the available national income), the benefit inevitably is temporary. It is extinguished ultimately by the further rise in internal costs which it directly stimulates. This is illustrated in recent experience. Producers for export undoubtedly benefited when the exchange rate was raised half a dozen years ago by 15 per cent (to £125 N.Z. to £lOO sterling), but today the plight of the sheep farmers is as bad as ever, or nearly so.

In the end, sheep farmers and other people in this country may be forced to the conclusion that a direct "adjustment and harmonising of all internal costs is the only solution of the problem of which sheep farmers at present are bearing the brunt, and that attempts to find some easier and less troublesome solution amount only to chasing shadows. The position as it stands is so serious, however, that even measures offering only temporary relief may gain a measure of approval and support to which, at a longer view, they would evidently not be entitled.

It must be hoped that the commission headed by Sir Francis Frazer which is to make a comprehensive investigation of sheep farming in the Dominion may be able to complete its inquiry and present its report in time to influence whatever action is to be taken on behalf of an industry involved in extraordinary and rather staggering difficulties.

FACTORY EMPLOYMENT.

7\_N announcement by the Minister of Labour (Mr Webb) that he is setting up a special committee “to discuss the whole situation relating to factory employment and the needs of secondary industry,” and to report to the Government at the earliest possible moment, may be welcomed. With departmental officers, the personnel of the committee is to include representatives of manufacturers, and it may be hoped that full attention will be given to the question of training adult and other labour for employment in secondary industry.

In the course of his recent tour of some provincial areas the Minister of Labour has been concerned primarily to find rural off-season employment for seasonal workers, but in a statement at Palmerston North the other day he observed that.—

The great bulk of the unemployed throughout New Zealand at present consists of men between the ages of 40 and 60, a considerable number of whom were previously employed as travellers or clerks, who lost their jobs through adding machines and the like or in the depression. This class of labour is very difficult to place because of its lack of experience ....

Under a methodical scheme of training, many of the men to whom the Minister thus referred, as well as large numbers of younger men now engaged in unskilled occupations, no doubt might be made to their own benefit and that of the Dominion, reasonably efficient in specialised factory work of one kind and another. With both skilled and unskilled men coming into the country from other parts of the Empire it is certainly time to proceed from talk Io action in doing what may be done to open up better working opportunities and prospects for New Zealanders whose existing situation leaves a good deal to be dwred.