POLICY WANTED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23718, 26 July 1940, Page 12

POLICY WANTED

AUSTRALIAN FARMERS MEETING WARTIME NEEDS ECONOMIST URGES LEAD [FROM OUR OWN COll II ICS PON I) KNT ] SYDNEY, July 'JO The Federal Government's failure to announce a war-time agricultural policy, in answer to the insistent demands of farmers, showed once more the long-felt need for a Federal body to plan agriculture and develop Australia's resources, said Sir. Arthur G. Lowndes, agricultural economist to the Bank of New South Wales, last night. Mr. Lowndes, who was .speaking at a meeting ot the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand, said that the absence of an agricultural policy was largely due to the division of responsibility among Federal and State Government bodies, and the need for an adequate authority to co-ordinate their work. The Federal body, he proposed, should bo a centre for compiling information affecting rural industries, and should act as a disinterested advisory body on agricultural policy, in much the same way as the Tariff Board acted for secondary industries. "The insistent demand from farmers that the Commonwealth Government should announce an agricultural policy cannot bo dismissed by a simple declaration that nothing can be done until Great Britain states her requirements," said Mr. Lowndes. "The man on the land rightly assumes that the Commonwealth authorities must have more information than is available to him, and urges that they should take the risk of making ••ill intelligent estimate of requirements. The risks involved would be negligible compared with those that are being taken by Britain, and few primary producers would refuse to adapt their production to war requirements." Mr. Lowndes said that failure to give a lead to agriculture was dangerous, becauso it must inevitably result in haphazard changes. Some groups of producers, in their anxiety to make a contribution to the war effort, would expand production in directions which might prove embarrassing to the national economy, while other commodities which ivere needed would not bo developed sufficiently.