FARMERS' UNION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 162, 11 July 1934, Page 8

FARMERS' UNION.

CONFERENCE OPENED. LORD BLEDISLOE'S TRIBUTE. "BRIGHT PROSPECTS." (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The annual conference of the New Zealand Farmers' Union was opened today by the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. After referring to the world economic situation, his Excellency stated that after spending four and a half strenuous years in New Zealand —the happiest years of his life —continuously studying New Zealand's economic and especially her rural economic problems, he- unhesitatingly said that he believed there was no country in the world where the prospects for farmers were brighter than here. This confident statement was, of course, he said, qualified by conditions, the most vital of which were the attainment of a uniform high quality* in exported products, the satisfaction of the exact requirements of oversea customers (however unreasonable those might seem), the proper educational equipment, or, alternatively, the elimination from the ranks of the wholly incompetent producers, who were a drag alike upon their colleagues and the country, the assessment and maintenance of land at its true value and its protection against anti-social and excessive speculation, and, as commodity prices improved, rigid determination of every section of the body politic to live in a national sense well within its means, and to reject with selfrepressive courage all ambitious national municipal or local aggrandisement or embellishment which was expensive to maintain, as well as to provide, and which a sparsely populated country which had emerged from barbarism and initiated its settlement less than a century ago could ill afford. Of all the above factors of economic retrogression none was more 'difficult to cure or its effects .more calculated to create insecurity permeating the whole fabric of the body politic than what was known as horizontal speculation, whether in land or minerals —that was to say, speculation which in no way contributed to occupational activity or the winning.of wealth, but merely placed a clog in the wheels of industry. Speaking in regard to farming matters, Lord Bledisloe said the! objective of the dairy industry should be to level up the standard of the worst produce to •that of the best. Ho deprecated economic provincialism. He said no Government could waive the responsibility for the economic welfare of the people, and Government organisation and direction might perhaps be necessary or desirable in initiating a new or more salutary system of production, factory conversion, distribution or transport; but if planning on a national scale was essential to a condition of assured and continuous prosperity of the primary producers, audi as he was confident that it was, the eventual control must be that of the farmers themselves, as it long had been in Denmark, and as it was in Great Britain during the war, and was becoming so again, and as was contemplated in Canada and elsewhere. Lord Bledisloe said he ventured to hope it would be found possible in the highest public interest to achieve harmonious co-operation between town and country and factory and farm.