DECREASED DAIRY PRODUCTION

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 10

DECREASED DAIRY PRODUCTION

Labour Situation Said To

Be Acute

APPRENTICESHIP SCHEME ADVOCATED

The serious decline in the production of dairy farm produce must be arrested, decided the National Dairy Conference, in Wellington, yesterday.,-The matter was referred to the representative' committee appointed to consider the guaranteed price, with the addition of a Pig Marketing Association member.

The question was just another angle of the guaranteed price problem, said Mr. D. G, Begley, Heretaunga. Dairy production had decreased by 20 per cent., it was estimated, over the past two years. From the post-war period till a few years ago it had risen at a steady 10 per cent, annually; but in the past year or two there had been a marked drop. Actually, they had slipped back 30 per cent. He understood the total of pig killings would be down by many thousands of carcases. ’ The decrease in the number of cows being milked was well into 70,000. The labour problem in country districts was acute, and there were more women and children in the cowsheds than evei- before, he said. How was the industry to compete with the drift of labour to the towns, or attract town labour into rural.occupations, when the farmer found it hard enough to keep his own sons on the land? No one would choose a rural occupation, after comparing the wages and conditions of the cities with those of the country. If this drift was allowed to continue, with production going down and talk of restrictions, they might have to face the position of reduced exports at a time when production was at its lowest instead of at its highest. It was surely possible to evolve a plan that would attract into rural in-, dustry, and particularly into dairying, young men of a suitable type and calibre. It would first have to be shown, however, that the industry could provide a future for those young men. He suggestetl some type of land settlement scheme whereby through diligence and thrift young men could in due course become working producers themselves. i

In the past, he said, boys had been regarded much as pawns or Shuttlecoeks in the game for nine months of the year, at the end of that period to be told that the cows were drying off and they could go’back to the cities with their spirits broken. As a result today every farmer was troubled with under-rate workers instead of the more desirable type. .What was wanted was a Constructive scheme of apprenticeship whereby boys could be trained to be, first, capable assistants to the farmers for whom they worked, and, finally, Independent producers. That would bring able young men into the industry, instead of underrate workers, and workers who had failed in other walks of life.

They should endeavour to raise the prestige of the farming industry, and place it on the same level as other skilled trades of the cities and towns.