AN ILL-CONSIDERED PROPOSAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 173, 24 July 1930, Page 8

AN ILL-CONSIDERED PROPOSAL.

(Published by Arrangement.)

' Sacrificing the Wheat Substance For the Egg Shadow. It is suggested in the Unemployment 1 Committee's report that if the duty on fowl wheat were removed the poultry farmer could get supplies of wheat cheaper' than he can to-day, permitting a greater number of people to be employed in the poultry industry, and that a great and profitable export business in eggs could thus be worked up. The actual position is that in Canteibury to-day, where poultry farmers can secure wheat at the same price as it would land from Australia in the North Island duty free, the Canterbury poultryman finds it impossible to make the business pay, and a<s late as Monday, July 14, a deputation waited on the Prime Minister in Christchurch urging the to grant a subsidy on eggs exported. This subsidy, it granted, must be paid by the taxpayer, but supposing greatly increased numbers of people engage iii the poultry business, how is the industry to be conducted profitably when those at present in it cannot make a decent living? Throughout the whole of New Zealand to-day there are under 200 persons engaged solely in making a living out of poultry keeping, according to official figures supplied by Mr. E. J. Fawcett, Farm Economist, of the .Department of Agriculture. There are between 0000 ar. I 7000 wheat growers. Are all these whea (growers who do the heavy and hazardous pait of the work of providing food for the nation to be sacrificed in a vain endeavour to build an export trade in egg*?