THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, June 3, 1938. THE FARMERS’ WEEK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 3 June 1938, Page 12

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, June 3, 1938. THE FARMERS’ WEEK

Farmers who assemble in the city during Winter Show Week are never at a loss for some subject of discussion. And it has to be said concerning the season that will come under review to-day and on succeeding days, at formal conferences or on less conventional occasions when those who work the soil come together, that it has provided more than the usual abundance of talking points. The summer months, for instance, while they were a joy to the city dweller waking almost daily to the brightness and warmth of clear skies, were definitely not an unmixed blessing to the farmer. The climatic conditions of the early part of the year did not help the production of root and grain crops, nor yet aid the growth of feed essential as a reserve for stock in winter. Vagaries of weather accounted also for a serious decline in the quantity of fruit available for export from the province, and for a reduced output of dairy produce, though the latter misfortune was balanced to some extent by the realisation of a more lucrative price on the overseas market. The values ruling for mutton and lamb were also fair during the export season; but again,' as a set-off, there was the substantial fall in the value of wool, as a consequence of which the cheque for distribution among growers in Otago alone was approximately £1,000,000 smaller than in the preceding season. These are matters, as even the least imaginative of townsmen will appreciate, to be debated at great length when the men who grow wool or grain or roots, or complain with persistent cheerfulness of the inadequacy of the guaranteed price for butterfat, get together on one or another of the varied occasions of Show Week. The dairy farmer, indeed, may be pardoned if he feels that he has come passably well out of a season that threatened to be a good deal less than a season ought to be. It is true that the guaranteed price, fixed at the commencement of the export period as representing, in the view of a benevolent Government, a just reward for his labours, did not arouse him to any extravagant expressions of approval. Costs, he said to himself and—unavailingly —to the arbiters of his destiny, continue to rise as surely as the sparks fly upward.. The guaranteed price is not enough, he said, nor has it ever been enough. And the validity of his grievance has at last impressed itself upon the powers that be, for the Prime Minister has undertaken that all of the proceeds from the sale of dairy produce in the current season shall be returned to those who earned them —meaning, in round that there is a bonus of at least £500,000, according to Government figures, coming to the dairy farmer, somehow, sometime. So the producer of butter-fat is “ one up ” on his brother who grows wool, or fruit, or perhaps mutton, lamb or pork, or who possibly wrinkles his brow while he puzzles over the marketing of his honey. For the farmers’ interests and activities, like his problems, are legion. He will not forget the problems while he does the round of Show and conference in the next few days. It may be surmised, though, that they will take second place to the satisfaction of his interest. For the nonce he is on holiday, and if the burden of his worries is lightened as the result of things seen and enjoyed and of contacts re-established during Show Week, the occasion will have again proved its great worth.