A KNOTTY PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 68, 18 September 1923, Page 6

A KNOTTY PROBLEM

Apart from the political capital which is being made out of the pending Imperial Conference in so far as it will consider the importation of foodstuffs, a very important fact is brought out into the light now beating on preference to products from British overseas Dominions. The National Liberal Party is ascertaining the views of farmers in Great Britain on what conditions as to duties (if any) they will be prepared to restore the Home wheat cultivation of 1918. The acreage in wheat and other grain, but chiefly wheat, in that year was the astonishing total of 10,950,985, together with 4,228,----257 acres in roots and potatoes; and the average production of wheat was 32J bushels to the acre. Even in 1913 there were .8,211,641 acres in grains and 3,984,734 in roots and potatoes, with an average of 31i bushels.of wheat. These facts show that, however archaic may be the means of cultivation (as some critics affirm), the productivity of Great Britain and the activities of the farmers are greater than most people at this end of the world imagine them to be. In effect the question put by the Liberals to the farmers isWhat price in the matter of duties of protection would you ask for raising as much wheat in the future as you did in 1918? The Ministers from the Dominions attending the Empire Conference will find, as they are do doubt already fully aware, that if the producing interests' that they represent are seeking preference, the British producer is considering something in the nature of protection. The fact that there are 45,000,000 of people to feed and that most of them (when there is the work to do) are engaged in manufacturing largely for export to Dominions and other external markets, is no doubt fully understood by producers in this country and Australia. But it is quite evident that the preferential problem, which will be one of the standing subjects for discussion at the Conference, at any rate in the Economic section, will prove a knotty and possibly highly controversial one. Its treatment will have a special interest for the New Zealand farmer, who feels that he has much to contend with in regard to foreign competition in meat and dairy produce, and especially in respect to butter.