Readers Write

Northern Advocate, 25 November 1938, Page 6

Readers Write

! Sheepfarmers on every occasion inform us, through the various journals, of their sorry plight, etc., etc., while the dairyfarmer smilingly receives his l ; 4i per lb. I will quote the remarks of Major J. Paissell King, genJ eral manager of the Producers' Co- | operative Distributing Society, who, i speaking upon the pronounced dif ferencs between the prices realised for New Zealand and Australian butter, said: “That loose methods employed in the marketing of Australian butter in Britain are the reason for the present margin of 7/ in favour of New Zealand butter.

STATE MARKETING OF WOOL■

If loose methods of marketing apply so forcibly to butter, it must also apply to wool, and I maintain that if this is sc, and loose methods are employed in the sale of wool, the Government should, in the interests of the industry, at least take over the marketing of the country’s wool. This country lost millions of pounds in the past through loose methods of marketing butter, and, no doubt, the same still 'applies to wool.—-“GUAR* ANTEED PRICE.”

In Thursday’s issue, Mr E. S. Tremaine again contends that he was right when he said, on October 8, that' the present marketing system w*as formulated by the dairy industry itself prior to the Labour Government coming into office. Let me refer Mr Tremaine to page 6 of the proceedings of the third Dominion Conference in Wellington, on September 19 and 20, 1935: “Proposals in Detail.—Mr Murdoch, chairman of the conference, then gave an epitomised draft of the recommendations proposed by the board for (adoption at the conference. The board will encourage the establishment of group organisations in the different districts, probably in the form of marketing as sociations with statutory powers under the Agricultural Emergency Powers Act. The allotment of produce in the groups to be in the hands of the board to begin with. The board will control f.o.b. sales until group organisations are functioning. Thereafter the groups may make f.o.b. sales on such conditions as the board may impose.” These proposals were carried at the conference by 56 votes to four, and I take it Mr Tremaine’s vote was with the 56. The scheme he voted for was a group marketing scheme, with f.o.b. selling, and he knows that is a very different one from the present scheme. Our scheme has no (groups competing with each other, no f.o.b. selling to allow speculators to break the market, no army of agents travelling up and down this country at the farmers’ expense. All these vicious land weak elements are eliminated in the present system, and were retained in the proposals Mr Tremaine voted for, and which were brought before that conference by Mr Davis, the London manager, on September 20, 1935.

MR. BARCLAY REPLIES.

Under those proposals it would have been impossible to reduce the selling commission from 2£ per cent, to 2 per cent. This reduction ' has saved the industry over £IOO,OOO a year. Our system has (also saved the industry over £IOO,OOO in getting it financed by the Reserve Bank at U per cent, instead of paying the old rate to trading banks. I still challenge the statement that the present marketing system was ready to be put into operation when Labour came into power. Everyone knowing the history of the industry in the North knows that Mr Tremaine was always a stalwart for f.o.b. selling. The group marketing scheme retained that, and also the competition between the different groups, which would have made it necessary to retain the 'army of agents that had to be paid for by the industry. If Mr Tremaine has not a copy of the conference proceedings I quote from, I will loan him mine, to show him what a vast difference there is in those proposals compared with the present scheme.—J. G. BARCLAY.