QUOTA PRINCIPLE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 253, 22 September 1933, Page 4

QUOTA PRINCIPLE

BRITAIN’S DEFINITE POLICY. MR BAXTER’S EXPLANATION. Pea - Press Association. WELLINGTON, Sept. 21. An arrival by the lonic to-day was Mr Thomas Baxter, a prominent official of the Na.tional Farmers’ Union of England and Wales, who is visiting the Dominion, on an invitation extended by lit. Hon. G. W. Forbes, to lay the viewpoint ,of British farmers on marketing problems before Dominion producers. Mr Baxter told a reporter on his arrival that the British Government, under its fiscal policy, was endeavouring to promote agriculture. The Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931. provided for marketing schemes for hops, bacon, pigs and milk. The scheme had already proved most satisfactory, as growers had been able to sell all they produced at very satisfactory prices. The pig scheme, Mr Baxter explained, was designed to encourage a large pig population bv guaranteeing prices ha,sea on the cost of production.

The Government was also assisting wheat-growing to certain limits and by a system of balance it was hoped to give assistance to all classes of farming. The object of the British milk scheme, continued Mr Baxter, was to sell the whole production of milk in England and Wales through the Produce Board. As much milk will be sold as buyers desire and the remainder will be disposed of to manufacturers of dairy products, which will be sold at pool prices, which will be the average price of all the milk sold. “We in England,” said Mr Baxter, “feel that vou are glutting our markets to such an extent that such a scheme is imperative, and if Dominion dairy farmers fall into line, this marketing scheme will assist their products as well as ours ; It means that the farmers will receive the same price for a reduced amount. Denmark has now been allocated a quota on pigs and is actually receiving more for a reduced exportation to Britain. “The present British Government is committed to quotas,” continued Mr Baxter. “Even the Labour Party say they will do it through import boards, which perhaps might be more drastic than the present scheme. “The National Farmers’ Union is recognised as the spokesman of the average working farmer and has a membership of 130,000. It deals with all questions affecting farmers and is not a political body. “You can make it clear,” concluded Mr Baxter, “that I come in no spirit of enmitv to New Zealand farmers, but I am anxious to secure their co-opera-tion. In fact, the success of the farmers throughout the Empire depends upon co-operation, for so long as competition results in glutting the one market open to us all, prices can never be satisfactory to any group of producers.”

He said he ha.d been a British delegate at the Ottawa Conference and the British delegates there had made it plain that thev did not wish to keep Dominion products off the London market, but preferred to keep out foreign products. Circumstances, however, had altered considerably since then.