DIGGING IN.

Evening Star, Issue 19613, 20 July 1927, Page 6

DIGGING IN.

When tiro Dairy Product) Board met in Wellington a week ago it was recognised throughout the industry that its proceedings would bo of a momentous kind. Tho official report of thorn communicated to the Press was of tho barest and briefest nature possible. It went little further than tho ratifying of the abolition of control. Tho question that then arose was as to tlio further need for the board. Before the board was created by Act of Parliament tho dairy industry had organised itself on cooperative lines. In the North Island there is the National Dairying Association, and in this island tho South Island Dairying Association, and theso bodies had satisfactorily carried out arrangements for shipping, insurance, etc., for tho factories, Under control they were appointed by tho board to act as its paid agents. With tho abolition of "control tl\e simplest and least expensive plan is for them to carry on their accustomed duties upon their old status—i,o., as responsible to tho factories and not as servants of the Control Board. However, tho board remains in existence, and must necessarily do so until it has disposed of the balance of last season’s output and squared up the accounts of tho pool with the factories—a dilatory and not altogether grateful process to all concerned. When this is done' it is natural to ask what is to happen. Tho functions of tho board will be few and unimportant, for it appears to bo tacitly agreed that the experiment of absolute control will never be tolerated again, and there is a feeling that its repetition should he made impossible by the repeal of the empowering legislation. The operations of tho board have cost the industry directly, amt tho country indirectly, a

vast .sqm of money. Under all those circumstances it dues not seem fitting that tho industry should continue to bo burdened with an overhead expense in the form of the remuneration paid to members of the hoard and salaries to its London agency. Some such idea is evidently held by a considerable proportion of board members themselves. It lots just been divulged in Auckland, a week after the board meeting at "Wellington, that there was a keen debate and a close division at that meeting on a proposal to merge tho London agency of tho Dairy Produce Board with that of the Moat Board. This was lost only on the casting vote of Mr Grounds. Perhaps after the stupendous results of absolute control the salvaging of £5,000 or £6,000 a year may seem a trivial matter, but after any industry has had a heavy financial blow it is the duty of those in charge of it to effect all possible savings. As the board has not scon fit to take the opportunity, tho path is opened up for others to do so for it and to go further, oven to the abolition of the board itself. That its continuance is anything but necessary for tho well-being of the industry is indicated by one fact alone. Home buyers’ representatives arc at present making offers to factories for their first month’s output of new season cheese, the prices quoted being Id per lb more than the return which the Dairy Control Board announces from tho last cheese pool cf the past season. This straight-out selling on the f.o.b, basis was a system which the board in its earlier days never tired of denouncing as a menace to tho industry, and which it ended —temporarily—whom it assumed absolute control. Producers estimate of tho beard’s negative achievement was plainly enough indicated at a recent meeting at Stirling, but there seems to be such an element of nhtuseiiess and tenacity that tho prospect is of as great and prolonged a commotion over the board’s dissolution a.s there was over its inception.