WHAT THE FARMER RECEIVES.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVIII, Issue 72, 26 March 1914, Page 6

WHAT THE FARMER RECEIVES.

; AND -.WHAT, THE CONSUMER

PAYS,

. A Home exchange, writing upon this subject, says that the American Government has been investigating the of consumers' prices received; by the farmeo*.. The investigations covered 78 cities of th© Union, and on the whole it appears to us that the farmer in these countries receives about the same percentage of the prices the consumer pays as the American farmer. In America the farmer receives a.bare 50 per.cent, of the retail price of milk. That is, the price he gets is doubled before the public can touch it. The average cost of freight is about 7 per cent., >and the retailer gets the remaining 43 per cent. .■/The farmer receives 55 per cent, of the consumers' price for poultry, and 69 per cent;, of the retail price of eggs; 55 per cent.- for apples sold by the bushel. In the case of oranges so]d by the dozen the farmer received only 20 per cent, of the retail price. When considering prices from the consumers' point of view it was found that the price paid by them for cabbages per head was 135 per cent., over the price received by the farmer; for oranges sold by the dozen .400. per cent. The price of meat retail was 38 per cent, over the wholesale, prices The net result of the investigations was that the'consumer had no ground of complaint against the farmers. ' The latter no--: where were extortionate. On the whole, the railway charges added little to the farmers' price. The waste came in the retailing, where the overlapping .was great, where the 'organisation was bad. There are too many people in-the retail business. . Too many expenses have to be paid. There are no\.storage facilities; and tons of produce are often carted out of the market as refuse simply because the whole system of .retailing' having grown up haphazard, being very costly, bears so many unnecessary" expenses, tihat it cannot afford necessary expenses/ If the "distribu- ; fi<m i>fj ifoodv :Was' inijnMpalisecL or jw:asj i^ntirMy,. coTOj?^a^iv.e}in^av't(^^v does: ; "anybody: believe";|or.: a ''. .i^asi^*^^ -that. -, .cold': js?tora^^w^«la.; riot be available; aj-i ways, and that every bit of food; brought would not be utilised, somer how? At present the farmers have to endure low prices and the public high prices because of this-preposter-ous method of bringing the food of the world to the people of the world.