Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 1939. HIGH COSTS AND LOW PRICES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 June 1939, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 1939. HIGH COSTS AND LOW PRICES.

AT the meeting of Wairarapa sheep farmers held m the A Masterton Opera House yesterday a great deal of ground was covered, but more was done to emphasise the difficulties m which pastoral industry is involved than to point the way to a practicable remedy. By a fairly large, but not overwhelming liia joritv the meeting endorsed a proposal “to levy the necessary fraction of a penny per lb to form a co-operative meat pool Under this proposal sheep farmers would themselves provide the funds with which to supplement low prices obtained or lat. ewes In a good many instances this apparently would mean that farmers would lake money out of one pocket m order o put it into another. Hill farmers, who do no fattening, no doubt would benefit, but the scheme, is largely one under which sheep farmers would assist sheep farmers. Methods of this kind can hardly contribute in any very important degree to the solution of problems arising out o tie fact that the sheep industry finds itself bearing high costs and receiving relatively low prices. The position is all the worse since it is chiefly with reference to current costs that the prices now being received for pastoral products are low. Prices now ruling/ and those received in the recent past are not low, on an average, in comparison with those received over an extended period of years. Wool, meat and other pastoral products constituted a large part of the exports from this country which last year attained a total value of £57,867,000—an amount, it is pointed out in the Governor-General’s Speech, which has only twice been exceeded in the history of the Dominion. . Though they are in this respect well up to standard, the prices now beiii" received by sheep farmers are declared to fall hopelessly short of balancing the high and rising costs the industry is called upon to bear. 1 i • While speakers at yesterday’s meeting laid full emphasis on the disparity between costs and returns, they admittedly did not get far towards prescribing a remedy. Something nevertheless was done to shape and consolidate opinion on the problems involved. In particular, the meeting by an overwhelming majority declared itself opposed to the payment of guaranteed ■prices for meat and wool. There appeared to be geneial acceptance of. the opinion expressed by the chairman (Mr Hugh Morrison) that an attempt to pay guaranteed prices to sheep farmers would send the country hurtling down a slippery slide of inflation. In view of the necessity that has already arisen of dealing in some fashion with a heavy deficit in the marketing account of the dairy industry, while at the same time representative dairy organisations are contending that higher prices should be paid for dairy produce, it will be rather strange if the Government feels itself able to contest the opinions expressed at yesterday’s meeting with regard to guaranteed prices for meat and wool. The policy of raising the oversea exchange rate also appeared to have little support at the meeting and was condemned in unmeasured terms by one. speaker. It might be said not unjustly that the trend of discussion in the Opera House yesterday went to show that sheep farmers in this district are very much at a loss in seeking a solution of the problems by which their industry is faced. Those of them who declared in downright, terms that the only real remedy was a lowering of internal costs admitted that there were no obvious means of securing that adjustment. No doubt sheep farmers throughout, the Dominion find themselves in much the same difficulty, but this does not by any mearfs necessarily mean that affairs can be left to take their course. Sheep farming is the most important of the industries by means of which New Zealand is enabled to meet its oversea debt obligations and to buy imports. If the present relationship of costs and returns in the industry is at all correctly indicated —a question on which authoritative light should be thrown by the investigation about to be conducted by a Royal Cominission—a considerable contraction of the present scope of sheep farming is threatened. If that, contraction occurs, the Dominion as a whole, and virtually all sections of its population, will be made poorer in a corresponding degree, save for the extent to which a reduction in sheep farming production can be made good by new forms of production. If only on the principle that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, the problem of re-establishing sheep farming on a basis of secure prosperity has the strongest claims to national attention as well as to the attention of those who are engaged in the industry.