EMPIRE FOOD POOLS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 138, 11 June 1926, Page 7

EMPIRE FOOD POOLS

MISTAKES FORESEEN

A SCOTTISH VIEW.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, 18th March,

The Glasgow "Herald" has a long leading article on Empire food pools, and it offers some thoughts for reflection, with the comment that criticism is better suspended.

"It is something of a paradox (says the writer) that while the Government proposes-to spend £1,000,000 to assist Dominion growers and producers to market their commodities in this country, many of our importers are apparently gripped with fear at the marketing power already possessed by important sections of Empire producers. Tho biggest example of acquired power and strength is the wheat pool of Western Canada, which operates the marketing of the crop from the world's main source of supply. But Canada was not the first of the Overseas Dominions to .develop the organisation of a co-opera-tive selling agency to act directly on behalf of producers. New Zealand, we believe, was the pioneer, and Australia soon followed. In Australasia it was the marketing of moat which was first subjected to the pooling arrangement, and in New Zealand the movement has extended to dairy produce. ... So swiftly has Canada adopted the pooling idea in tho handling of its grain crops, which probably represents the largest commercial interest in the Dominion, that the wheat producers' organisation already ranks as tho biggest selling agency in tl)e world. "What is happening in our overseas Dominions is worthy of attention. If the new marketing methods are to be permanent they represent a vast change in the economic structure of leading parts of the Empire. But it is important to note the distinctions in the structure of the pools. Ir. New Zealand the tendency is to secure State sanction for them. The Meat Producers' Board, for instance, consists of eight members —five elected by the producers of meat for export, two appointed by the Government, and one representative of live stock and station agents. Though control is limited by the New Zealand Act of Parliament to the export trade, the board has powers even to take over the whole meat-mar-I keting organisation in any importing country. The Canadian wheat pool, on the other hand, is purely a voluntary organisation on the part of producers, and has no State sanction or connection. A COMMON AIM. "Whatever differences exist in the status and machinery of these Empire food pools, they have a common aim. Their policy is, to use the Canadian phrase, to achieve 'orderly as distinct from disorderly marketing' of wheat, or, to use the New Zealand ideal, to attempt 'to equate demand and supply at any moment' There is always a certain amount of danger in centralis- ,| cd power, and it is perhaps natural that importers and merchants, whose business it is to bring food into this country at competitive prices, are apprehensive at the growth of these new marketing agencies. But it is obvious that the managements of the pools have meantime quite enough on hand in the marketing of their produce_ in accordance with declared policy without considering in what ultimate form exports should be shipped in the best interests of producers themselves and of the economic welfare of the Dominion concerned. It is practically certain that the pools will make mistakes and will require to learn from experience "The New Zealand dairy farmers may find that, in tho end, it does not pay to cold-store butter too long, so long as Denmark, its main competitor, can ship fresh supplies regularly. The Canadian wheat pool may find that values can fall as well as rise for the latter portion of a crop. It might, indeed, prove salutary if such lessons came in early childhood rather than later. "The angle from which some criticism of the pools comes is unexpected. Only the other day the chairman of the United Co-operative Baking Society of Glasgow, one of the largest breadproducing plants in Scotland, described the modern system of marketing wheat in North America as a 'pernicious development,' which 'meant that there was no longer a free market for tho leading staplo of the world and the staff of life. Corners were said to be impossible in these days, but there wa3 little gain in being left in the hands of powerful cliques. Here, surely, was the work for commissions and food councils!' "Apparently the British co-operator believes in tho consumer organising to eliminate competition in the things he must buy, but he strongly objects to tho producer organising to reduce competition in the things he must sell. Looking to tho disastrous effectß of the uneconomic price received for Canada's record wheat crop of 1923 (an experience which led Scottish co-oper-ator: to abandon their big wheat farm in Saskatchewan and leave the risks to the growers who have now formed the pool), we believe that the new form of marketing is a necessary experiment. If it succeeds it will undoubtedly bring stability to the agriculture of Western Canada, will accelerate land settlement in this vast region, and will thereby lead to increased production, which in the end will prove to tho consumer's advantase." 85, Fleet street.