Over-production of Primary Produce

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 48, 19 November 1932, Page 13

Over-production of Primary Produce

Sir, —The cry to the farmers this last two years has been produce more, produce more aud more, to make up for the fall iu prices. The Government has subsidised us (tho same, as has been done to secondary industries) by giving the fertiliser companies £300,000 to give the farmer cheap manures; the railway has given us a cheap freight on manure and lime. Now the farmers are producing too much mutton, lamb, beef, butter, and cheese—more than Great Britain wants from us. Great Britain must buy of the people that will buy of her—not as we have been doing. For years we have been Selling to her and tvanting the cash, aud spending it where we like in buying luxuries from other countries. Britain has bought all my wool for the last thirty years, but we put on her manufactured woollen goods a prohibitive duty so we can bolster up a few woollen mills that only use 3 per cent, of our wool. I consider it would be better for New Zealand if all this subsidising was cut out. If a farmer cannot produce lambs, mutton, butter, cheese, etc., to compete in the London market without being spoou fed with cheap manure, etc., then let him produce something else. And if our secondary industries, such as woollen mills, cannot compete against the British manufacturer (after them taking wool from here to Britain and back), without a 25 to 30 per cent, duty on the manufactured article, let them do as the farmers will have to do, cut it out, and things will come to a natural level and right themselves soon.

It is man-made laws interfering with the natural laws of supply and demand that are the chief cause of our being in the mess that we are in at present The man who will suffer most in this debacle is the man who has played the game, or who has tried to play it to the best of his ability. He is going to be pulled down and suffer equally with the thriftless, pleasure-seeking, eat, drink and be merry for to-morrow we may die crowd, because they are i$ the majority, and the majority rules. As for myself, being an old farmer, having nearly reached the allotted span, I will throw my hand in and sit at the ringside and watch the struggle go on between uprightness and honesty and craftiness, greed and deceit. —I .am, etc., FARMER. Masterton, November 12.