GUARANTEED PRICES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22489, 5 August 1936, Page 12

GUARANTEED PRICES

With the announcement of the guaranteed prices for butter and cheese for the season that has just opened the sense of uncertainty that had been embarrassing the dairy farmers of the Dominion is removed —and a sense of keen disappointment, if not indignation, will take its place. Mr. Nash says that the prices have been fixed, according to (lie promise, on the butter-fat basis of eight or 10 years—and the most generous interpretation of that promise. The average for 10 years is slightly over Is Id per lb. butterfat, and for eight years about 12Ad. The comparable figure in the guaranteed price scale will enable the most efficient factories to pay suppliers about Is Id, the average for 1935-36. Nothing, however, is allowed in the basic price, already loaded with the exceptionally low rates obtained from 1932 to 1935, for the impending higher scale of wages not only on the farm but also, probably, in the factory, for the rapidly rising cost of farm and household necessities and for taxation. thus the dairy farmer, having been deprived of what he had considered to be his inalienable right to market his produce, starts his season's work with the definite knowledge that his net return will be substantially less than last season. His one crumb of comfort is that he is guaranteed against an extraordinary market collapse, a contingency that seems very remote in view of existing prices and the general buoyancy of industry in Britain. Under the circumstances the Government cannot expect the farmers, to be content with their lot. Yet that might well have been the text of Mr. Nash's economic sermon to them. An efficient producer, he says, should be assured of a sufficient net return to enable him to maintain himself and his family in a reasonable state of comfort. What is assured him, even if no further burdens are placed upon him, is the right to work the longest hours of anyone in the community with less prospects than the open market appeared to offer. And against his bondage there is no appeal.