COMMITTED TO QUOTAS

Evening Star, Issue 21523, 22 September 1933, Page 13

COMMITTED TO QUOTAS

BRITISH FARMING AMBASSADOR ARRIVES ENGLISH FARMERS’ ATTITUDE (T ER United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, September 21. Mr Thomas Baxter, a prominent official of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales, < who is visiting the dominion on an invitation extended by the Prime Minister (Mr Forbes) to lay the viewpoint of the British farmers on marketing problems before the dominion producers, arrived by the lonic to-day. . Mr Baxter told a reporter on Ins arrival that the British Government under its fiscal policy was endeavouring to promote agriculture. The Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931, provided for marketing schemes for hops, bacon, pigs, and milk. The hops scheme had already proved most satisfactory, as the growers had been able to_ sell all they produced at very satisfactory prices. The pig scheme, Mr Baxter explained, was designed to encourage a large pig population by guaranteeing prices based on the cost of production. The Government was also_ assisting wheat growing to certain, limits, and by a system of balance it hoped to give assistance to all classes of farmmg The object of the British milk scheme, continued Mr Baxter, was to sell the whole production of milk in England and Wales through a produce board. As much milk will be sold as the buyers and the remainder will be disposed of to the manufacturers of dairy products, which will be sold at pool prices which will be the average price of all the milk sold.' “We in England,” Mr Baxter said, “ feel that you are glutting our markets ,to such an extent that, such a scheme is imperative, and if the dominion dairy farmers fall into line this marketing scheme will assist their products as well as ours. It means that the farmers will receive the same price for a reduced amount. Denmark has now been allocated a quota of pigs, and is actually more for a reduced exportation to Britain. “ The present British Government is committed to quotas,” continued Mr Baxter “Even the Labour Tarty says it would do it through import boards, which perhaps might be more drastic than the present schejne. The National Farmers’ Union is recognised as the mouthpiece of the average working , farmer, and has . a membership of 130,000. It deals with all questions affecting farmers, and is not a P °“ t iou it clear,” Mr Baxter concluded., “ that I come in no spirit of enmity to the New Zealand farmers, but am anxious to secure their co-operation. In fact, the success of the farmers throughout the Empire depends upon co-operation, for so long ns competition results in glutting the oho market open to us all prices can never be satisfactory to any group of producers,” He said he had been a British delegate at the Ottawa Conference, and "the British delegates there had made it plain that they did not wish to keep dominion products off the London market, but preferred to keep out foreign products. Circumstances, however, had altered considerably since then.