THE REBUILDING OF AGRICULTURE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 107, 19 April 1933, Page 9

THE REBUILDING OF AGRICULTURE

MAJOR ELLIOT ON SWIFT REORGANISATION. LONDON, March 11. Major Elliot, Minister of Agriculture, speaking at Newton Abbot last night, said that for many of the staple agricultural products this country was not only a market but the market of the world. He enumerated the supplies of dairy produce imported into England, and said that they all knew well the anxiety which milk producers all over the country felt about the course of prices iu the coming year. “It is said,” he proceeded, “that we can control these matters by means of a tariff. The man who says he can control the butter situation with a tariff is not talking sense. Nearly half our supplies come from the Dominions, to which a tariff cannot be applied. Even as to the quarter that comes from Denmark, the break in the Danish exchange, such as w'c have seen in the last two or three weeks, is enough in an afternoon to wipe out the whole protective value of the present in creased tariff, and turn it into a subsidy. ’ ’ Our watchword must be to obtain a remunerative level of prices. However they juggled with facts and figures, it must remain that an article sold below the cost of production was an article which sooner or later would bankrupt the producer, aud the bankruptcy of the producer was the swiftest way either to the bankruptcy or the starvation of the consumer, and very possibly both. Great demands for organising power and executive ability were about to be made upon the industry of agriculture. It was vital that at this moment it should have confidence in the office at. Whitehall and be able to draw freely, as it was doing, upon the reserves of experience and assistance which were there available. He reminded them that the pig meat trade was worth £85,000,000 a year altogether. The whole of the reorganisation had to be explained to the producer, worked, out in detail, and put into force between October and July. If it could be done, and it was being done, it would be one of the swiftest reorganisations of any trade put through in any country. The proposals of the Milk Reorganisation Commission were only made last month, but they were under active examination now. “Yet we know,” he said, “that unless action is taken in the milk industry before the autumn, and long before the autumn, the milk industry will bo faced with a crisis not less grave than those which have come to other branches of agriculture. I am therefore more than glad to see that farmers in all parts are pressing on with the consideration of the marketing scheme for milk, which is part of the report, without waiting for an announcement upon the larger questions of policy which that report raises. “The Government, realise that a pronouncement on the further questions of policy which tho Commission raises must be made at an early date, and we shall not shirk these decisions. The best earnest of that is the active negotiations in which we have been engaged with the Dominions upon the butter situation. These questions, of course, are intimately bound up with the trade negotiations which are being conducted with foreign countries also, and I can guarantee to you that the interests of agriculture in those negotiations are not being neglected by tho Government.” Major Elliot said that the situation both at home and abroad was moving with an almost dangerous velocity. The business of 1933 was to get control of that velocity. They were embark ing on a. very great adventure, not merely the rebuilding of agriculture as an industry which would support itself and its people, but in playing their part as a unit in confronting the new conditions of their day. To meet these conditions there was being born a strong and adventurous spirit in the countryside. They relied, on that spirit and it would not fail them.