FARMER BADLY OFF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 80, 5 April 1939, Page 15

FARMER BADLY OFF.

SYMPATHY OF VISITOR. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) DUNEDIX. Tuesday. "A new generation of sheep-farmers has arisen in New Zealand since the beginning of the post-war period, and the problems and difficulties have increased with every year. The equatter has disappeared and in his place is the runholder, with his 2000 to 5000 eheep and a host of handicaps which hie predecessor never knew. I sympathise with the New Zealand wool-grower to-day and could wish that the average city dweller would ehow a little more understanding in the matter also." These remarks were made by Mr. E. C. Stewart, a visitor from New South Wales, who arrived by the Maunganui to-day, commenting on a branch of primary industry in Kew Zealand with which he was familiar in Otago and Southland two decades ago and which he has studied since. The year since the Great War, he said, had eeen the end of the large squatter and the emergence of an entirely different class of woolgrower, for whom he haft a higher regard as a class than the Australian sheep'farmer. "I wonder do town dwellers in New Zealand realise how badly off the sheepfarmer ie in this country? Why, in Australia, without such heavy costs, the woo] industry cannot make ends meet and is asking the Government to provide a wool bounty because nothing less than 1/ a pound for wool ie a payable proposition."