WHAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS DONE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 302, 19 November 1935, Page 6

WHAT THE GOVERNMENT HAS DONE.

It is well for farmers to consider in the hurly burly. of the election what has been done for them by the Government. If the National Administration has been purely a farmers’ one—and it is not necessarily so—then it has been very largely justified by all the circumstances. From primary industries comes the greatest part of New Zealand’s wealth, and it was essential that every farmer capably managing his property should be kept on the land. His problem was to reconcile costs with the values he was receiving for his produce. Wool, meat, and other pastoral products felt the impact of altered economic conditions very quickly; butter and cheese were affected later in this disastrous way. When prices show a margin over the costs of production, to that extent the farmer is prosperous. Those conditions operated prior to 1930, but as the grey clouds of depression deepened there was hardly a farmer who was not producing at a loss. It has been estimated that costs were actually 4U per cent, and more above receipts. To close the gap was the Government’s duty as far as it lay within its power, and then to take what action it could to increase receipts. It did both things. Interest and rents tvere reduced giving relief to a considerable number of deserving cases. The Mortgagors Relief Act was passed, then later the Final Adjustment Act, both providing for the adjustment of farm liabilities, while the Mortgage Corporation has been established to give the farmer, as well as others, the benefit of cheap loans. A reduced bank rate, abolition of the graduated land tax, and the conversion of local body loans have also been of material value to farmers in reducing their costs. In the direction of subsidies to primary production—on fertilisers, the remissions of freight charges on lime and farm produce, assistance to fruitgrowers, and rate subsidies to local bodies —encouragement and valuable help have been given. The principal measure to increase _ farmers’ receipts was the raising of the exchange rate from 10 to 25 per cent., and by this process a sum of £9,000,000 in round figure’s has been added annually to the value in New Zealand currency of our exports. That this increase has been of considerable benefit to rural producers is generally recognised, and farmers in the Manawatu, particularly dairy farmers, have appreciated the increase in their incomes. In overseas marketing, first at Ottawa and this year in London, the Government through Mr Coates and his expert advisers concluded agreements that have been of outstanding value to the primary industries. In the case of the Ottawa Agreement foreign imports of meat into Britain were restricted, and this Dominion among others received an expam. .g share of the market. Foreign dairy produce was taxed while New Zealand’s has been admitted free without restriction. In London, recently, Mr Coates concluded a meat agreement with the British Government that not only provides for increased exports of mutton and lamb, beef, and baconer pigs, but ensured the abandonment of the proposal to impose a levy on imports, lhe saving to New Zealand producers on mutton and lamb alone is £830,000. These are facts the farmers should carefully weigh against the illusory proposals of the Labour Party, chiefly, and the undoubted possibility that if implemented they would not only mean full control of farming' activities, but also that inflationary methods would be necessary to provide the cost.