POTATO MARKETING CAUSES NEW WORRY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22512, 16 December 1947, Page 6

POTATO MARKETING CAUSES NEW WORRY

"FARMERS are frequently accused of being "agin’ the Government” and of being grousers. Yet it is a fact that they have never yet let a Government down. Whatever the demand made upon their resources and productive capacity, they have responded with a will. Never has the Dominion as a whole or a country overseas which depends to a large extent on the farmers’ outpiit had to suffer from any show of industrial recalcitrance on their part. l Possibly in some cases against their own judgment or inclination, they faithfully obeyed the present Government’s exhortation to plant more potatoes this season. _ As far as we can recall, Government authorities have never definitely declared that there would be a shortage this year; usually the words “may be a shortage” were employed. But the effect of the continual spate of “grow more potatoes” propaganda was to communicate to farmers a_sense of urgency over the whole matter and a desire to co-operate to the best of their best ability. Back garden enthusiasts also caught the spirit of this State publicity, and the result has been the threat of a potato market glut. If the Government wants to steer production along well regulated and controlled lines, it will have to do better than this. The potato propaganda appears to have been deplorably haphazard —a kind of uncontrolled control. Official spokesmen for the Government and no one else are responsible for the predicament in which the Gisborne potato growers now find themselves. There is no need to review the facts as published at length last night; they speak for themselves. It is the future that counts. If justice is done by way of amends for ill-controlled publicity, the Government and its Minister of Agriculture should treat the representations of the Gisborne deputation with something more than conventional sympathy. Several practical suggestions were propounded at the meeting of the Potato Growers’ Association on Saturday evening—among them the regulation of supplies to buying districts and the plans for dehydration and cool storage. Unless the threatened local losses are minimised to a very appreciable degree, the Government can be accused of an action tantamount to a breach of faith, and farmers may be tempted to give future advice from the Government no more than cursory consideration—a case of once bitten twice shy.