PRICE-INSURANCE FUND.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 59, Issue 183, 18 May 1939, Page 8

PRICE-INSURANCE FUND.

STABILISING VALUES. FARMING IN BRITAIN. / Price insurance was mentioned by.Mr Thomas Levy, M.P., (Elland Division, A'orksliire), when he spoke at the Leeds Farmers’ Union dinner. He said be bad been reading the Board of Trade returns. They were very illuminating—almost tragically so. AY litre was the compensation to Britain’s export trade for increased loot! imports? Indeed, one might ask: Where was the compensation anywhere for increased food imports? Mr Levy said he had recently made some suggestions to the Ministry lor the improvement of-the industry. His suggestions were that the industry should be treated as a whole and not piecemeal. Ho suggested the creation of a Price Insurance Fund by the Treasury and the industry jointly, anti the fixing of a standard of profit lor the (arm as a whole, this standard being guaranteed bv the Price Insurance Fund, .subject to a firm level of efficiency in agricultural method and production on each farm. The liabilities of the Treasury and the industry,to the fund would depend. of course, upon the prices obtained and upon the limitation of imports. He believed that there was a good deal of room for improving the farmer’s return by adjustment of the returns now taken out of the industry by intermediate selling agencies. There was

an enormous network of these agencies and the gulf between the price received by the producer and the price paid by the small consumer buying retail was enormous, in some cases. \ “Country May Wake Up.” He realised that it must not be popular .in some quarters to suggest that hero was a field for reform, and that the system which, in many cases, gave a good living to intermediaries at the cost of the primary producer could he altered to the general advantage. But they were dealing with a great basic industry, essential to the country, and they could not efford to overlook any legitimate means of ensuring a sound working basis for it. “Unless agriculture gets a square deal pretty soon, the people of this country may wake up one fine morning and find that they have difficulty in getting a square meal,” said Lord Cornwallis, speaking at the Tenterden Farmers’ Union dinner.

“One of the duties of the State,” he continued, “is to educate the younger generation. I would like to see agriculture or the knowledge of what is produced, from the land, a compulsory subject in every single school in the country. If this education could he given they might find the next generation less ignorant about the soil and less indifferent and apathetic to the needs of agriculture.”