OVERLAPPING IN DAIRYING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20472, 25 January 1930, Page 14

OVERLAPPING IN DAIRYING.

Sir, —I.will reply briefly and finally to Mr. McLarin's letter in your issue of 21st. He says: "If the co-operative and private companies met and agreed to do away with overlapping they would save thousands of pounds sterling for the dairy farmers." I give this analogy: If the Naval Armaments Conference, now sitting in London, decided to scrap all battleships, cruisers and naval contrivances of war for all time, that would certainly save expenditure of many billions of pounds sterling, but, for the lime being, make tor chaos in the industrial worfd and tbrow millions of people out of employment. I ask the average thinking person (including Mr. McLarin) if a combined conference of cooperative and proprietary interests is any more likely to get "anywhere" on the question of solving overlapping. Our cooperative directors, etc., will certainly refuse to commit their fellow-dairy farmers to such a "tie-down." Besides, such-an arrangement would be contrary to all accepted ideas of British fair play. Overlapping is inevitable until some common basis of marketing is accepted by all, which, by evening up prices,. will amicably and automatically adjust unnecessary waste. The process must be gradual, not drastic: and then, no one factory having distinctive advantage over another, the present evils of overlapping, stressed by Mr. McLarin, would not occur. No practical farmer then would prefer to port his milk or his cream a few miles further, in order to procure the 2d or 3d advantage over his more" immediate factory. " T - B -