“AID AND THE PRICE”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26589, 11 October 1947, Page 9

“AID AND THE PRICE”

Sir,—Your leader in Friday's issue is surely not meant to be helpful to the cause of more production. If it is, the writer must have lost sight of his objective, blinded’ by his bitter politicial bias against the Labour Government. The only help you give to Mr Walsh’s appeal to farms to produce to the limit, with his assurance t that the new season’s prices will be adequate to meet the extra costs involved, is the statement that farmers generally will regard his undertaking with suspicion, and the number who will accept it as justification . . • for the considerable outlay will be few," and you enlarge on your well-worn and utterly unprovable statements regarding the alleged losses of farmers engaged in producing cereals and dairying. It is nonsensical to suggest that more production might be on the way for the coming season had the farmers two months ago been made aware of their increased costs of production (fertilisers, etc.) and the prices they would receive in return. With a lifetime spent in farming, I am still without the knowledge of such a farmers’ paradise as the land where a farmer learns the return coming from a crop before the seed is sown. But anxious as you profess to be to see effective help provided for Britain, your readers are still waiting to see some really practical working plan evolved by you that would better the suggestions made by Mr Walsh. —I am, etc., W. D. Mason. Middlemarch, October 6.

[Abridged. Will correspondents please note that they must confine the length of letters to 200 words, well spaced and legibly written? —Ed., O.D.T.]