PRIMARY PRODUCE.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 10696, 15 October 1931, Page 3

PRIMARY PRODUCE.

131 PRO VEM ENT IN PRICES PREDICTED.

Ait early increase in prices for primary produce, coupled with a lowering of production costs, which will greatly improve the present position of Nev Zealand farmers, is predicted in a memorandum prepared by' Professor A. H. Tockor. professor of economics at Canterbury College, for the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. Professor Tocker was asked to comment upon a resolution passed by the union dealing with a proposal that all wages and rales of interest should he based on a sliding scale according to the market value of primary produce and that the values of till factors entering into production should he stabilised according to the rise and fall iu the values of (he staple commodities of HU Dominion. “Looking back over (lie history of the last 10 years, the present price level appears to be abnormally low,”

said Professor Toekcr. “Probably I bore is no record in history of a fall in prices as sharp and sudden as that of (he last two years being maintained, and there appears .to be, therefore, the strongest reason for hoping for a substantial rise in world prices within it year or two. “Meanwhile costs are likely to he adjusted to permanently lower levels in New Zealand, and 1 feel confident that if the farmer can manage to carry on for a year or two they will find that with rising prices on the one hand and falling costs on the other, their position will be made more secure and more profitable than it could be if they resorted to the methods outlined' in the resolution,”