Farm Workers’ Future

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28980, 22 August 1959, Page 3

Farm Workers’ Future

Sir,—As one who worked in the city as a draper’s assistant and now has a small holding, I can see In the not too distant future I can establish myself on a farm. Off hand I can name eight who have established themselves not because of wealthy parents but through small holdings and leased land. Speaking from some six or seven years’ experience, this way of establishing oneself would be much easier and quicker if the small farmer received just prices for his effort Last week three shopkeepers were fined for having the top-grade price ticket on lower-grade produce. This is the rule rather than the exception. New Zealand spends large sums on agriculture research and science, yet we still tolerate the law of the ruthless in distribution. Potato certification at growers’ level works well; but let it pass to merchant and retailer and it becomes a racket in home garden packets.—Yours, etc., GROWER. August 20, 1959.

Sir,—Early in 1957 the press made reasonable headlines of a Labour Party proposal to assist farm workers to ownership. One condition was that a worker must have served 10 years on the land. After working 10 years for some of our farmers a man has almost earned the gift of a farm. Humiliating living conditions, some cottages stuck right in the farmer’s backyard, with no privacy whatever, foul-smelling plumbing by amateur hands, foul smells from the sheep yards, and a constant risk of rats and mice running through those 50-year-old walls. The bonus was once a pick-me-up when the season’s work was over, but it no longer appears. “It’s been a bad year,” says the farmer. "The Budget . . .” Farmers should snap out of their apathy and give their workers decent living Conditions; they won’t mind clodding along till that lucky day when they win an art union. After all the worker would be in the farmer’s shoes if he happened to have had ancestors who arrived in the immigrant ships and bought up land for IJd an acre.—Yours, etc., TUMBLEDOWN. August 21, 1959.