BRITISH FARMERS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 121, 24 May 1930, Page 12

BRITISH FARMERS

DEMAND SOME PROTECTION

A meeting of some 10,000 agriculturists from seven contiguous counties in the South-West of .England was' held early in April at Salisbury to protest against subsidised imports of foreign foodstuffs. The meeting was non-parly, and the Duke of Beaufort presided. Trade representatives were present from the National Farmers' Union aud Transport and General Workers' Union. Mr. George Dallas, M.P., chairman of the Labour Agricultural Group in the House of Commons, said that no industry could successfully face competition such as agriculture now had to face from bounty-fed cereals from Germany, bounty-fed flour fror" France, and potatoes grown by convict labour in Algeria. Every country in the world which had an exportable surplus of agricultural products sent it to England at prices not only below the cost of production in that country, but below the cost of production in the country of origin. "We (ill believe," said Mr. Dallas, "in ehen|> food for the people, but we want it to be known that no section of the community lias any right to get cheap food at the expense of (he people who produce it.''

Mr. Baldwin at about the same time assured a meeting that he addressed: "T fun not going to ask the country to vote upon foodstuffs at next election."

Tn an address to shareholders in tin? great department store of John Barker and Rons. Kensington (considerable purchasers of New Zealand produce), Sir Sydney Skinner, chairman of the company, said: "Excluding food, I should say that the amount of goods we sell of foreign origin would not bo more than 10 to 11 per cent."