PRIMARY PRODUCTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25672, 21 October 1944, Page 4

PRIMARY PRODUCTION

WORK OF DISTRICT COUNCILS In a statement handed by Mr W. Huse (Dominion supervising organiser) to the North Otago Primary Production Council yesterday, it was pointed out that in the rural life of New Zealand one of the outstanding results of the war was the creation of primary production councils and committees. The war introduced new changes in demand to which primary production in peace-time offered no parallel, and one of the efforts to meet these changes took the form of an appeal to the farmer himself to lend a hand in organising war production on the farming front. Examples of unavoidable changes in demand were given. The fluctuations that had occurred had added to producers’ uncertainties, but the orders and countermands of orders simply complied with the requests, and also the actual needs, of the British Government from time to time, and were part of the grim game of war, and therefore unavoidable. The New Zealand producers were put in the position of the army itself, and had been called on to win the same production ground twice; and loyally they had responded. When a primary production council got behind a production drive, the statement, added, the farmers knew that tire targets were not being set in any other than an expert manner. The psychological value of farmers’ confidence in farmers was very great, and was very much needed in the changing courses of war, and might be needed after tire war. The number of district councils was 36, with representation from farmers' organisations and district committees, so that the organisation from farmer to National Council was a complete one. It could be said confidently that not only in the hundred and one technical farm matters, but in appeals to the heart as well as to the head, the production councils were pointing the way to victory. Indirectly, if not directly, the farm front was a part of the ‘ total front of modern war, and here the struggle against falling production continuecl unabcitcd, and would continue.