THE QUOTA SYSTEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22065, 22 September 1933, Page 8

THE QUOTA SYSTEM

BASED ON CO-OPERATION VISIT OF MR BAXTER VIEWPOINT OF BRITISH FARMER (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, September 21. Mr Thomas Baxter, a prominent official of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales, who is visiting the Dominion on an invitation extended by the Prime Minister (Mr G. W. Forbes) to lay the viewpoint of the British farmers oh marketing problems before the Dominion producers, arrived by the lonic to-day. ~ , Mr Baxter told a reporter on his arrival that the British Government under its fiscal policy was endeavouring to promote agriculture. The Agricultural Marketing Act, 1931, provided for marketing schemes for hops, bacon, pigs, and milk. The hops scheme had already proved most satisfactory, as the growers had been able to sell all they produced at very satisfactory prices. The pig scheme, Mr Baxter explained, was designed to encourage a large pig population by guaranteeing prices, based on the cost of production. Ihe Government was also assisting wheat-growing to certain limits, and by a system of balance it hoped to give assistance to all classes of farming. „ , ... , The object of the British milk scheme, continued Mr Baxter, was to sell the whole production of milk in England and Wales through a produce board. As much milk will be sold as the buyers desire, and the remainder will be disposed of to the manufacturers of dairy products, which will be sold at pool prices which will be the average price of all the milk M «We in England,” ’Mr Baxter said, “feel that you are glutting our markets to such an extent that such a scheme is imperative, and if the Dominion dairy farmers fall into line this marketing scheme will assist their products as well as oura. It means that the farmers will receive the same price for a reduced amount. Denmark has now been allocated a quota of pigs,» and is actually receiving more for a reduced exportation to Britain. . , _ “The present British Government is committed to quotas,” continued Mr Baxter. “Even the Labour Party says it would do it through import boards, which perhaps might be more drastic than the present scheme. The National Farmers Union is recognised as the mouthpiece of the average working farmer, and has a membership of 130,000. It deals with all questions affecting farmers, and is not a political body. “You can make it clear, Mr Baxter concluded, " that I come in no spirit of enmity to the New Zealand farmers, hut am anxious to secure their co-operation. In fact, the success of the farmers throughout the Empire depends upon cooperation, for so long as competition results in glutting the one market open to us all prices can never be satisfactory to any group of producers.’ He said he'had been a British delegate at the Ottawa Conference, and the British delegates there had made it, plain that they did not wish to keep Dominion products off the London market, but preferred to keep out foreign products. Circumstances, however, had altered considerably since then.