FARMING INDUSTRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 March 1942, Page 6

FARMING INDUSTRY

POSITION IN RELATION TO WAR NOT’YET DECLARED ESSENTIAL. HELD TO BE IMPRACTICABLE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. Decision that at present it would be undesirable and impractical to declare farming an essential industry under the National Service Emergency Regulations was made at a conference on Thursday of representatives l of interested parties and the Government. This was revealed by the Dominion secretary of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, Mr A. P. O’Shea, in reply to questions yesterday. At the conference were the associate Minister of National Service, Mr Wilson, the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Barclay, and representatives of the New Zealand Workers' Union, the Sheepowners’ Federation and the Farmers’ Union. It was fully agreed, said Mr O'Shea, that farming was an essential industry from a national point of view and that labour must be made available for it, but there were numerous difficulties in the way of declaring the industry essential under the regulations —difficulties that did not exist in the case of secondary industries. Seasonal workers, who made up a considerable proportion of farm labour and who were not continuously employed on any one farm, were the real major difficulty. It was also stated that, if a man wanted to leave a farm, any attempt to retain him by force could only bring unsatisfactory results. For one thing, the relationship between employer and worker was much more personal on a farm than in a factory; for another, a dissatisfied worker could not well be left to handle animals.