DAIRY PRODUCE CONTROL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22778, 14 January 1936, Page 8

DAIRY PRODUCE CONTROL

It is at least wise that all risk of conflict of opinion between the Government and the Dairy Produce Control Board, on the involved question of marketing policy, should be avoided. The request made to the Board by the Minister of Agriculture for postponement of both the local and export control schemes does not seem necessarily to mean that the Government will disapprove of the Board’s plans and prevent them from being put into effect. The point made by Mr Lee Martin is that the Government is still considering details of its guaranteed prices scheme, and that it would be imprudent to permit the Board to proceed on the lines approved by the Dominion Dairy Conference until it was shown that its revised policy would harmonise with the Government’s own proposals relating to the production and marketing of dairy produce. The Board is to meet in Wellington to-day, when the Minister’s requests will be considered. It is not easy to see at this stage why the Board’s selling plans and the Government’s price plans should come into conflict. But, since the Labour Party’s proposals at the moment lack all essential definition, speculation on that point is fruitless. Mr Savage has said that the Government is anxious that the overseas selling arrangements for the Dominion’s dairy produce shall be as perfect as possible. The Board is actuated by the same motive. Its group marketing scheme was drawn up largely at the instance of the Board’s London manager, after an exhaustive study of conditions obtaining in New Zealand and at the London end. It was endorsed by the Executive Commission of Agriculture and proved entirely acceptable to the conference of the industry held in Wellington last September. Briefly, the, project aims at the grouping of the lutput of the dairy companies in six pools in the North Island and one in the South Island; the abolition of factory brands in favour of group brands; a general raising and levelling of standards of quality; and the reorganisation of selling arrangements in the United Kingdom, probably on the principle that each group should have a direct overseas selling agent. In the local sphere the Board proposes that distributors shall act solely as its agents, and that it will control the handling of all produce. It does not intend, however, to concern itself with the question of retail prices. The plan has received a certain amount of criticism. It has been suggested, for instance, that the Board has concerned itself with producer aspects to the exclusion of the claims of merchants and consumers. Those are points on which the Government may require certain assurances. Nevertheless, the marketing problem is an urgent one, and loss has been suffered by the producers through delay in grappling with it. There does not seem to us to be any cogent reason why the Government’s desire to assist the dairy farmer with a guaranteed price should interfere to a material extent with the Board’s plans—at any rate, insofar as they are designed to improve export marketing.