FARMERS' INCOMES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19230, 20 January 1926, Page 7

FARMERS' INCOMES.

- gj r _An examination of the incometax returns to 1923, when farm land was made exempt from that form of taxation, will show that, although the gross value of farming products exported was double, and more than double, the figure realised before the war, yet the mcornes of the men on the land were disintegrating with extreme rapidity. During the same period the other classes shown, m tho income-tax tables were mcreasmg their returns by leaps and bounds, the taxable incomes, for instance, both companies and of persons gaged in trade lowing phenomenaLmea. Probably on account of this the amount of money lent on mortgage in the cities has multiplied several times, the annual average of the city mortgage per acre being about £2OOO, as against £490 in. 1916 There is now'/ roughly, twice as much city land placed under mortgage ts i-i 1916, the amount of money absorbed b V town areas being now about equivalent to that advanced on rural security (48 per cent, to 52 per cent.). What proportion of these mortgages are just paper and what represents money advanced, it is hard to say, but the mortgage tables show'clearly that the average inflation of farming land, apart from tho immense increase of production-value, is a mere bagatelle to the increase of city properties. In view of the essential national necessity of having the land of this Dominion occupied and productive to its fullest capacity, will not some oi our farmer MP.'s move fcr a statement as to the average of farmers' earnings, on different classes of land, in different districts and in the various branches ot farming? Something should ha done. Certain knowledge of the extent of the evil mav spur us on to provision of a remedy." We are heading straight for land aggregation and depopulation of rural lands, which even the tremendous rise in value of farming produce has been unable to stave off. Waipapa Bay. A. E. Robinson.