Primary Production Councils

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24279, 9 June 1944, Page 4

Primary Production Councils

The North Canterbury Primary Production Council’s discussion of a letter from the Malvern Primary Production Committee, as reported yesterday, emphasised several points of the greatest importance in relation to the production campaign. For example, m urging the council to “ keep the real issue of the “ falling-off in production before the “ appropriate authority,” the Malvern committee instanced the decline in the wheat acreage in its own area, and attributed it to low yields from marginal land netting an insufficient return at the price. Members of the council questioned whether the council could properly “ recommend ” higher prices. It is, however, an advisory body, as the secretary said it had been told; and between giving advice and making recommendations there is small practical difference. But the suspicion is prompted that councils have been told in so many words, or have deduced from experience, that their advice is wanted when it is asked for, and that it is wanted when the time comes to apply policies, not when they are being decided. Whether this suspicion is fully justified or not, it is more than a little disconcerting to find the council, in one of the most important production areas and in wheatgrowing a dominant area, so uncertain of its rights and duties, so shakily in need of Mr A. H. Spratt’s prod in the right direction. If the council found that, in trying to stimulate production, it was making no headway, he said, it ought to “ tell the authorities why,” and could do so without fear of “ being “ used as a bargaining instrument.’’ Such uncertainty and such need amount to certain evidence, at least, that the council has not been encouraged to develop initiative and responsibility; and the want of encouragement can be want of encouragement from only one source. But there has been no period since the war began when it was so important as now to give initiative full play and load capacity with all the responsibility it can bear. “ We “ have no policy,” one member of the council said. “We’ve no power “to go ahead with a policy if we “ had it,” said another. This is disastrous, as one illustration is enough to ex'hibit. Spring sowing alone now can fill the national contract for wheat: but the price for v.heat will not let farmers take the

risk, even on land where it should be taken. Again, there is good wheat land still that has never been sown in wheat; and there is nobody to say that it must be sown. Yet again, there is land that has been over-cropped and ought not to carry wheat; and there is nobody to forbid its being abused, If the primary production councils were allowed to do their job, they would be allowed to guarantee the fcirner against a risk they think should be taken; they would be allowed to order land into wheat; they would be allowed to forbid wheat sowing. As things are, they 'know and are powerless to use their knowledge. As things are, Wellington does not know; and in Wellington is the power—and the futility.