GUARANTEED PRICE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 June 1940, Page 4

GUARANTEED PRICE

INTENSE DISSATISFACTION OF DAIRY FARMERS, DECLARED BY NATIONAL ASSOCIATION. (By Telegraph—-Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Reference to the “intense dissatisfaction” with the guaranteed price fixed by the Government and the “great unrest throughout the industry” is made in the annual report of the directors of the National Dairy Association of New Zealand, Ltd. “Never since the passing of the Primary Products Marketing Act has there been such extreme disappointment or such a justifiable storm of protest as has followed the Government's present decision,” says the report. "Surely the Minister must realise that the industry has reached a parlous state under the burden of rising costs aud inability to secure or pay for suitable labour. “Experienced farmers do not abandon their chosen occupation without sound cause, and the decrease of 4327 dairy-farmers in 1937-38 followed by a further decrease of 1470 last year is surely - striking evidence that the industry has not received the consideration it must have if it is to expand or even hold its place in the community. “A continued decline in production cannot be otherwise than a menace to the welfare of the whole of New Zealand, and mere appeals for more production are of little or no avail if more production spells greater losses.” Observing that .in spite of the elaborate price control machinery set up by the Government, commodity prices are everywhere soaring at an alarming rate to the farmers’ disadvantage, the report adds: —

"The Minister in the exercise of his dictatorial powers under a mutilated Marketing Act has been utterly uncompromising in his attitude and must accept his full share of responsibility for the Dominion’s failure to achieve the great objective of increased and increasing output of the foodstuffs so urgently needed by the Empire at war."