FLOWING TAP

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 124, 29 May 1933, Page 8

FLOWING TAP

BRITISH PRODUCE SUPPLY

CONTROL CONTROVERSY

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, April 20. The Government's proposals for. assisting farmers, as set out in the Agricultural Marketing Bill, are sharply criticised in a manifesto issued on behalf of a number of prominent agriculturists and land owners.' The signatories include the Earl of Lonsdale, the Earl of Duiraven, Lord Earlech, and Lord. Pisher. "It may bo desirable," the manifesto states, "that agricultural marketing should be organised and controlled. It may be reasonable that the Government should not make any regulation limiting imports that' would -jconflict with, existing agreements. But it is not reasonable to call upon the farmers of Britain, to submit to restriction and control when they are unaware of tho degree of 'restriction and , control to which their overseas' competitors will lie subjected." It is pointed out that farmers are "being invited to approve a scries of schemes for regulating the marketing ,of their products under which it is proposed that they should surrender control over tho kinds of produce that may be sold—prices, terms, and dates of delivery—and, in some eases, the right to produce at all for certain markets. \ , "The very far-reaching powers with ■which it is proposed to invest produce marketing boards," the manifesto continues, "are not.such as should be surrendered without a definite assurance that they will be used, not only with the intention but with the effect of benefiting the agricultural industry. With the best intentions in the world, the marketing boards will be unable materially to benefit and assist the industry so long as the entry into British markets of competing foreign produce is unregulated as to quantity and price. "Tho agricultural industry does not deny the necessity for the organisation of marketing. It is willing to consider any scheme on its merits. But, to use a homely example, it is futile to make plans for bailing out a trough | <lown to a certain level when tho trough lias a tap running into it, and, you do j not know how much water is passing through the tap in a given time. ' "Consideration of the marketing eehemes should be suspended until the Government is in a position to anjiounce, not vaguely that it hopes to reduce the flow from the tap, but defiaiitely that it is in a position to do so, and by how much."

C. W. Price and Co., 01 Dixon .Street, yill sell furniture, piano, and bedding in g-ljeir mart tomorrow, at 1.30.