FAVOURS FOR FARMERS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 77, 13 March 1934, Page 3

FAVOURS FOR FARMERS

Europe’s Agrarian Policy DISCRIMINATION ESSENTIAL LONDON, March 12“Englishmen are so accustomed to hearing about the excessive Australian, Canadian and Argentine tariffs on manufactured goods that they do not realise the extent that industrial countries in recent years have restored to measures for agrarian protection that make the former seem moderate,'* says •“The Times.” “For instance, the price of butter in London in December was 65/- compared with 184/- at Berlin and in Belgium and 238/- in Paris “European governments since the war have regarded the tai uier essentially as the backbone of the nation and the defender against Communism, so that any measure was considered justified if it kept him happily on the land. The French and German farmers receive three times the price for their butter, that New Zealanders obtain, and if the present conditions continue it is easy to visualise Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Denmark abandoning their farms. “Remedies are only effectively applicable when Britain and the Dominions have a clearer idea of the objects of their economic policy. The Dominions at Ottawa have already recognised the necessity for exercising tome discrimination in the encouragement of uneconomic industries, but recognition still has to find sufficient expression in their tariff schedules.”