NOT DELIBERATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 295, 14 December 1938, Page 14

NOT DELIBERATE.

LOWER DAIRY PRODUCTION.

FARMERS MAKE DENIAL. (From Our Own Correspondent.) MORRINSVILLE, Tuesday. A resolution expressing regret that statements should have been made in the Press and over the air to the effect that farmers were deliberately reducing production for political purposes was passed at a meeting of the Morrinsville branch of the Farmers' Union last evening. The meeting gave such statements an emphatic denial. Mr. F. W. Seifert, who is chairman of directors of the Morrinsville Cooperative Dairy Coy., Ltd., explained that the company's production was lower this season because of the adverse weather conditions so far experienced. "We must dispel the idea that farmers are wilfully decreasing production," he said. It was true that some farmers had reduced the size of their herds and gone in more for sheep because they now found it difficult to secure suitable farm labour. What farmers were concerned about was running their farms in the most efficient manner 60 as to secure the maximum income.

Mr. W. F. Stark, a director of the Norfolk Dairy Company, agreed with Mr. Siefert, and moved that the meeting should deny statements that farmers were deliberately reducing production.

Mr. J. M. Allen, M.P. for Hauraki, who was present, agreed that it was quite incorrect to say that farmers were trying to reduce production. There had been a certain amount of changing over from dairying to sheep farming.