FARMERS’ DIFFICULTIES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16202, 27 November 1926, Page 9

FARMERS’ DIFFICULTIES

N.Z. NOT UNIQUE

CONDITIONS IN ENGLAND

Farmers in the Dominion who undoubtedly are laboring under many disadvantages and who are, finding it exceedingly difficult to carry on at all are apt to imagine that those conditions are confined to New Zealand. Such, however, is not the case, and in practically every country the primary producers are having a hard time.

An English farmer at present holidaying in P.B. said the impression that the farmers in England were mak ing a good living because of their proximity to the markets was entirely erroneous. Relatively, he thought, the farmers in New' Zealand were in a better position than their English brethren, many of whom had been forced to sell their holdings. Much of the trouble in England could be traced to the dole, which meant that while hundreds of thousands of people were being paid for doing nothing, the farmers and other workers had to pay sufficient to maintain them. This meant that rates were continually rising, and during- the last few years they had in many places become so exorbitant that farmers had been forced to sell their properties. Added to this was the fact that stock prices had been receding steadily during the last two years, while the cost of production, if anything, had risen slightly. All production costs were at least 100 per cent above pre-war level, but the prices ul timately paid for the produce, were nowhere near as greatly advanced as this.

It was easy' to see that many of the farmers in New' Zealand must be working under difficult conditions, but he Thought they were as well off as the primary producers in any country, and better off than the majority of farmers iii England.