FARMING COSTS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2667, 8 September 1937, Page 8

FARMING COSTS.

(To the Editor)

Sir, —Yesterday in Paeroa I met a fellow farmer whom I thought had tons of common sense, and I was anxious to compare the year’s workings with him. I knew that he had been bitten with the compensated price bug, but I did not count on it affecting his reasoning power. All I could get from him was that everything had gone up, and he was £lOO worse off than he was last year, and. as he got into his car and drove away I could still hear him yelling “I’m £lOO worse off.”

Before touching costs I would deal for a moment with the price we received for the season ended. It has been established that the price over the season averaged 101 per cent.; that gives us 9?>d per lb. sterling, and the New Zealand company paid out 14d in New Zealand currency; so we received 4£d from John Citizen, and to me, that is a fair compensation. Now, sir, the farmer is in a favourable position compared with his town mate. There is no rent to find on Monday morning; we have milk, cream, butter, eggs, poultry, pork, bacon, kitchen garden and orchard in season, and in many cases’ our own firing, so we garner quite a little of our living from the land. Many of our costs are lower than the previous year, mortgages are being lowered where unduly high, interest is down, power and lighting, superphosphate and lime, fire insurance, flour, pollard —these items are all down and are among our heavy costs. There, are dozens of other items no higher, such as all charges payable over the post office counter, so when we bring a little reason to bear we find the rising costs are confined to labour where employed, and household expenditure, and we find the greatest rise is on those articles produced and sold by the farmers themselves, such as products from skins and hides, woollen goods, potatoes, meat, and milk products where we have to buy. Having exploded this humbug of rising costs I maintain that we have a sense of security that is worth a great deal, and compared with town workers, we have been well treated, and I rarely meet with a dissatisfied farmer. H. E. HILL. Paeroa, September 7, 1937.