The Manawatu Daily Times The Quota

Manawatu Times, Volume LVI, Issue 7185, 17 June 1933, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times The Quota

Mr. Forbes lias made it quite clear to the Economic Conference that New Zealand is not prepared to agree to the quota system as applied to our primary produce, and it will be interesting to see just how far the Dominion’s representatives can go in preventing what so many leaders of British agriculture regard as a sovereign cure for their ills. There is, however, one considerable body of opinion in Britain which may be expected to ally itself powerfully on the side of the New Zealand producer. The consumer in Britain has an able advocate in Lord Astor, who speaks with personal experience of price control by the Ministry of Food.

In an article in the Nineteenth Century he produces strong arguments in favour of the general attitude of the great body of New Zealand farmers who oppose quota restrictions. Restriction of supply, otherwise the creation of artificial scarcity, he considers to be the counsel of despair in a world where 30,000,000 unemployed persons and their families are unable to purchase normal quantities of food, and where the cast populations of China and India are living below a reasonable subsistence level.

To this might be added the great Imperial argument that if by quantitative restrictions the primary industries of the Empire countries are to become more or less static, there will be no British outlet for the surplus population of the United Kingdom. The empty spaces will not be filled. Millions will remain on the dole in Great Britain with a low purchasing power that must tend to make the quotas permanent.

From the standpoint of the consumer, it is contended that quotas symbolise a food tax, the bugbear of British politicians. Every support is given to the marketing schemes for the means they provide for improving marketing methods, but objection is taken to the fact that they combine this technical matter with price control. “Parliament is entering light-heartedly,” says Lord Astor, “on a system of food control, forgetting that restriction and control, even under the sanction of war scarcity conditions, opened the door to much obstruction and chicancery.” He mentions that the meat quota scheme has not raised to any extent fat cattle prices in Britain, but at first gave a fillip to Argentine beef at Smithfield benefiting only the importing interests.

As to the power of regulations under which farmers will be forbidden to sell surpluses, “42,000,000 consumers of Great Britain may be as ready to break the regulations which infringe unreasonably their liberty of choice and standard of living as Americans have been to ignore the Eighteenth Amendment.” These arguments do not come to grips with the state of emergency that exists in British agriculture, which demanded some kind of action, but they touch on aspects of the matter which provide food for reflection. No quota can be imposed without creating problems for the future.