LAND PRODUCERS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 128, 4 June 1929, Page 8

LAND PRODUCERS

If there is "another side" to the motor-car question, there is equally another side to the townward drift and Dr. Fisher, Professor of Economics, of Dunedin, is sure that he has found it. His argument, as we understand it, is that the rural industries, whether supplying food or raw material, need no more man-power than is requisite to fill the demand they have to fill. If a greater manpower produces more than the requisite, there is a fall in prices, that is, a fall in the money the farmer receives; if a greater man-power is absorbed without production-increase, then there is a rise in labour cost, that is, an increase in the money the farmer pays out; so the farmer is hit by either route, until such time as the price of his produce in the one case, or the price of his employed labour in the other, has found its true value again. W"ith present adequacy of world-supplies of food and raw material, "there need be no concern about the changes in the ratio of number of farmers to total population." In a world sense, this may be true; but can it be said that New Zealand is over-producing if she annexes a larger share of a world-mar-ket (food and raw material) which has a total consumptive demand hugely in excess of her present quota? Is there within sight (and within the range of New Zealand's outputting capacity) a Jimit to the absorption of her commodities, beyond which prices would fall? If a "reversal of the drift" to the New Zealand cities were to result in doubling the Dominion's food export, could it be said that this would inevitably "indicate difficulty in maintaining food supplies, with an inevitable depression of economic standards"? Also, would it be "alarming" if better farming and more labour on farms gave New Zealand a still bigger share of Britain's dairy produce imports? Concerning dairy farms, one of the findings of the Government's Farm Economist (Mr. E. j. Fawcett, M.A.) is that "high per acre production is obtained on those farms having the greatest number of labour units available per 100 acres." "