GUARANTEE AT WHAT PRICE?

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 117, 19 May 1937, Page 10

GUARANTEE AT WHAT PRICE?

Farmers are interested in the price to be paid them for next season's dairy produce, and are clamouring for an increase. The people other than farmers are wondering what will be the price they will have to pay under the guarantee. Their uneasiness will not be allayed by the efforts of ihe Minister of Agriculture to persuade the farmers thai lliey will get what they want.

The basis for calculating ; the payment, said the Minister to the Farmers' Union at Auckland, will be the formula provided in the Act, and I suggest it reveals little difference from the schema advocated by the union. We

want to live up to every promise we have made, and it will not be our fault if you are not satisfied with the prices decided upon for the incoming season. The so-called formula provided in the Act for price-calculation is so wide, as we have pointed out previously, that almost any price could be fixed under it. ' It stales that the ■facts to be taken into account shall be: last season's price, stability, and efficiency in the industry, production costs (not further denned and possibly including inflated land values), living standards, marketing costs, and "any other.matters deemed relevant." The Minister evidently thinks this formula wide enough to cover the farmers' demands, and he tells them "it will not be .our fault if you are not satisfied." But what about satisfying the public who must, either through inflation or taxation, pay the cost. While promising what the farmers want the Minister should tell the public what the guarantee has cost already, and what it is likely to; cost next season. If the deficit is £2,000,000 this year what will it be if a higher price is paid?