FACING A CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 3 June 1938, Page 9

FACING A CRISIS

POSITION OF FARMING INDUSTRY FAIR STANDARD OF LIVING WANTED (Per United Press Association) INVERCARGILL, June 2. The serious position of New Zealand farmers was emphasised by the president of the Southland Provincial Executive of the Farmers’ Union, Mr A. R. Johnston, in an address to members of the Invercargill Chamber of Commerce to-day. The farming industry was facing a very serious crisis and the Farmers’ Union was very concerned, he said. There was between the farmer’s export prices and costs a big gap which the compensating price scheme sought to close. Since 1926 export Juices had been lower than the armer’s production costs and, in 1935, the guaranteed price had been fastened upon as a means of relief. This scheme, however, had not worked out as expected and there was considerable dissatisfaction among dairy farmers at the Government’s partial ignoring of the steadily rising costs when fixing the guaranteed price. The speaker said with confidence that the dairymen in Southland were producing butterfat at pence below the cost. Taking, as a basis of calculation, a farm with an annual production of 60001 b of butterfat, Mr Johnston said that a year’s working would represent a debit of £l7l 9s. In his estimates the Minister of Finance (Mr W. Nash) had not allowed for interest and depreciation, and many of the working costs were placed at too low a level. Farmers working perhaps 60 hours a week were allowed an average of Is lOd an hour, whereas the unskilled labour rate was fixed at 2s 4d an hour on a 40-hour week. He declared that the method of arriving at the guaranteed price was unfair and the only alternative was the scheme for a compensating price which would take rising costs into account as well as allowances for interest and depreciation and for the payment of competitive rates of wages and a fair standard of living for the. farmer himself.