King Country Chronicle. Friday, July 14, 1939. MEAT AND WOOL GUARANTEES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4810, 14 July 1939, Page 4

King Country Chronicle. Friday, July 14, 1939. MEAT AND WOOL GUARANTEES.

As was expected, the Farmers' Union Conference in Wellington has not favoured a guaranteed price for meat and wool as a cure for the position in which farmers find themselves to-day. One of the main reasons for this is obvious —the inability of the Government to guarantee, along with the price for butter, sufficient return to ensure the stability of New Zealand's major industry. This knowledge is also shared by the Government, as evidenced by the indefinite replies made to the president, Mr. W. W. Mulholland, and the branches which have written to Mr. Savage on the matter. Already, as Mr. Mulholland has stated, the guaranteed price for dairy produce has been shorn of most of its other attributes, and has become nothing more nor less than a State marketing scheme. Through " his inability to grant the dairying industry the price found by the Advisory Committee to be due to it under the guaranteed price formula, Mr. Nash disclosed his inability to adhere to the spirit of the guaranteed price legislation, even during a period of good overseas prices for dairy produce. Then, before leaving for England Mr. Nash found that the time had arrive.d for a staying of the advance of the guaranteed price, at tendency which he claimed must be reflected in the Labour union demands. But, as Mr. Mulholland has pointed out, the Government can only hope for this tendency; and it is a hope that is foredoomed to failure. Its methods to control prices have ignominously failed in the past. With the added burdens of social security, defence, the effect of the import restrictions only just becoming apparent, and the restiveness of the Labour unions to any checking of the wages spiral, the dairy farmer has no hope whatsoever of finding stable costs to meet a stable guaranteed price. What hope would the sheepman have of securing sufficient aid from State sources to place him in a position to compete successfully in the open labour market to-day and ensure him a sufficient return to grant him a living commensurate with his service to the community? No purely stabilised price could help him over his major difficulties, for the costs with which he has to contend have far outstripped the average overseas return he can reasonably expect for the next five or six years for his production. Nor with the country's finances in their present state can large-scale assistance be guaranteed from State funds; it is but little wonder that the grazier prefers to trust himself to the fluctuations of the overseas markets, hoping for a raising of the exchange rate or a reduction of internal costs, rather than embark on a scheme which the Government, through sheer inability to provide the necessary finance, refuses to define in a straightforward fashion, and v/hich is likely to mean merely State control of the marketing of meat and wool.