WHEAT MARKETING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 70, 20 February 1939, Page 7

WHEAT MARKETING.

CANADA’S NEW POLICY. OTTAWA, Feb. 17. In the House of Commons to-day the Minister of Agriculture (Mr ,T. G. Gardiner) .announced an entirely new wheat marketing policy. The custom of pegging prices lias been abolished and assistance will be granted to farmers instead of through an acreage liouus. Condemning the fixed price, the Minister stated that a grower with a small crop got little and with no crop nothing at all. Yet. aid for this year’s crop had cost the Canadaian public ■18,000,000 dollars. The new plan nould encourage liomebuilding and maintenance rather than increased production. The Government's intention, said Mr Gardiner, was (o introduce legislation calling for co-operative marketing of all agricultural products. Auxiliary legislation would afford facilities to meet emergencies through world market developments. A Winnipeg message sa.vs that grain loaders are cautious regarding the new plan. The Alberta Wheat Pool has issued the following statement: —“Regardless of the new legislation, unless world prices improve the Canadian West faces a disastrous vear. No farmers anywhere can produce profitably at the present- world prices. The pegged price was a substantial prop, the absence of which will be severely felt.”

Mr Frank Eliason (president of the United Farmers of Canada) asserted that the present prices are no benefit to farmers as the bonus was promptly absorbed bv creditors.