SOCIALISING THE FARMS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23019, 22 April 1938, Page 8

SOCIALISING THE FARMS

Although the Labour Party has reaffirmed as its main objective the socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, the Government has no intention, according to Mr. Savage, of socialising New Zealand's great farming industry. Labour's actions during the last two and a-half years hardly square with the Prime Minister's belated attempt at reassurance. The dairy farmers have already seen their production socialised, while the Government has full legislative powers to apply the same treatment to other producers. Production is rapidly being regimented and it is wily another step to socialise the most important means of production —the land. Mr. Nash himself looks on the guaranteed price scheme as a measure of the value of land. "If a farmer who sells his land gets more for it than he should," he told a gathering of producers on one occasion, "I would take every penny off him that I could." Land values, therefore, are to be dictated according to formulae and, indeed, cases have already arisen where the Government, as mortgagee, has refused to sanction land transfers because a buyer has had sufficient confidence to offer more than the arbitrarily determined productive value. Again, settlers under the small farms scheme«have been refused freehold tenure and have been forced to continue working as State tenants, while Government members have been preaching salvation through the Soviet method of collective farming. Over and above all this, the Government, after nearly a full term of office, has given no definite statement of land policy. Silence on this point is ominous and farmers cannot be blamed if they regard the future with misgiving. .