SHEEPOWNERS’ FEDERATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 July 1941, Page 4

SHEEPOWNERS’ FEDERATION

CONFERENCE DISCUSSIONS WELLINGTON, July 23. The Government is to be asked to expedite a statement of its policy lor the disposal of next season’s meat, according to a motion carried at the annual conference of the New Zealand Sheepowners’ Federation ,in Wellington to-day. The federation decided to submit its request through the Meat Board, and failing a satisfactory outcome in the near future, to send a deputation to the Government. The Government should be told in forcible terms that it was jeopardising the sheep industry of this country, said Mr. W. S. Glenn (Feilding), referring to the question of the disposal of cast ewes. There was only one buyer and seller of the meat, the Government. If it did not face the position, everybody in the industry would suffer. Mr. A. McDonald (Wairarapa) said it was the duty of producers to rise as a body and demand that old ewes be disposed of. If the Meat Board was going to be ignored by the Government it should go to the country and explain to producers that the board was not taken notice of. Mr. O. J. Hawken (Hawera) said ewes should never be sent home, because by overstocking the market the price of other meats was brought down. The Government should be urged to reduce this meat to some form where it did not compete with other meat. Mr. E. Hay (Christchurch) suggested that the Government be urged to resume boning and canning immediately. Mr. J. Begg (Otago), a member of the Meat Board, suggested a motion urging that ewe mutton in store be disposed of at the earliest possible moment. The Meat Board had put all matters raised to the Government.— P.A,

TOO MUCH PESSIMISM. WELLINGTON, July 23. ' Undue pessimism among farmers was strongly deprecated by Mr. H. D. Acland, president of the New Zealand Sheepowners’ Federation, in an address to the annual meeting of the Federation to-day. The present was no time for panic, he said. “One of the gravest mistakes that can be made at the present time is for advice to be tendered to farmers along unduly, pessimistic lines, such as, ‘farmers must make up their minds for hundreds of thousands of tons of meat to be put down the chute and made into manure.’ The effect of such statements can be no other than extremely harmful, and if made in some countries at the present time would bring swift retribution to those responsible,” said Mr. Acland. “I would say go ahead, carry on as usual on each individual farm with the assurance that no Government can survive which demands a maximum production of any article as part of the Empire war effort, and after production, takes a line of action which will force the producer of that article produced for war purposes into the bankruptcy court. This is no time for panic, but rather for steadfast and earnest endeavour, and a determination by the whole community to pull our weight as a Dominion in the great struggle we are all facing to-day. as only by this line of action can we reach our common goal, which is the regaining of freedom, liberty of conscience, and normal trading facilities for the whole of the world.”