LOCAL BUTTER MARKET.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 15, 15 December 1932, Page 4

LOCAL BUTTER MARKET.

AIR SINCLAIR’S SCHEAIE.

A’ARYING A’JEAA’POINTS,

Following the unanimous decision of the Dairy Produce Board to support the principles of the scheme put forward hy Mr A. J. Sinclair, of the Te Awamutu Dairy Co., Ltd., to stabilise the price of butter on the local market, Mr Sinclair has received letters from all parts of New Zealand. Most of them express approval, hut a note of criticism presents itself occasionally. Aj member of Parliament, representing a city constituency in the South Island,) has written Mr Sinclair as follows: — VIEWS OF AN M.P. “I have considered your scheme. You must remember that 1 represent a consumers’ and not a producers’ constituency. I do not suppose there is a pound of butter made in my electorate, and you would not expect me to vote for increasing the cost of living to anything approaching £400,000 a year for butter alone. To ask the local consumer to pay nearly double the price of exported butter is asking more than 1 am prepared to support. I do not suppose for one moment that any Government would agree to such a proposal. If it did, it would not survive the next election.” MB SINCLAIR’S REPLY". “Your criticism is most unfair,” said Mr Sinclair, in reply. “No one is asking the consumer to pay ‘nearly double the price of exported butter.’ You are confusing the wholesale price of bulk butter in London with the retail price of put blitter in New Zealand. Our butter is retailing in London to-day at Is a lb. to the consumer; it is retailing in your constituency at 9d and lOd a lb. Does that commend itself to you as desirable ? “My proposals for the local market suggest that the consumer should pay 2d a lb. more for a fresh butter straight from the churn than the farmer receives for a butter which has been frozen and stored for several months. To put it another way, I suggest that the New Zealand consumer should pay Danish parity for a fresh butter. I see nothing unreasonable in this request, and the numerous expressions of approval I am receiving from the general public are encouraging. “The farmer in this country has reached the stage where lie is not worrying over much whether this Government or any other Government survives the next election. The question of his own survival takes precedence at the moment. He is beginning to ask himself why he should have to buy all his requirements in a highly protected market, and sell the product of his labour in this country on the parity ot the world’s cheapest market. That may he necessary with some commodities, hut it need not be necessary with butter. There is nothing unfair in asking that the standards which determine the price of a pair of hoots should also determine the price of a pound of butter “Am 1 asking too much if I request

J that you approach this problem, no ' from the point of view of those city con l stituents of yours, who never made a pound of butter, but from the viewpoint 'of a section of the community upor whom the well-being of every one ol your city constituents depends?”