QUANTITY AND QUALITY NEEDED

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23131, 21 September 1940, Page 8

QUANTITY AND QUALITY NEEDED

♦ New Zealand Farmers’ War Effor

CALL FOR MORE PRODUCTION In some respects the war has relieved the farmer, of New Zealand from part of his normal anxieties, though with every other member of the community, these anxieties as a whole have been vastly increased. In one direction the farmer has no need to worry, and that is in the general direction of production. The British Government has called on him for all the production he can compass, and the New Zealand Government has passed the request on. The farmer, therefore, must produce all he can as his most effective war effort. The vast drive for production that the industry is now being called on to make, and to which it is responding so well, makes a fresh call to farmers to use the most advanced methods in all branches. This means additional expenditure, but returns in some instances are calculable well ahead, and finance need not be an insuperable barrier. What will happen after the war is a question that must enter the speculation of farmers, whose industry is essentially one of long term planning, not months, but years ahead. If New Zealand is to keep its position in the world’s markets, a position that in meat and dairy produce among other things, is unchallenged, New Zealand farmers must concentrate on keeping up the highest standard of livestock. Years before the war came to disrupt all calculations, Lord Bledisloe continued to emphasise that markets could be retained only by an ever-intensified search for quality. It is then, the duty of the New Zealand farmer, not only to produce to the best of his ability, but to produce the best he is able.