POLICY OUTLINED

Southland Times, Issue 20148, 7 April 1927, Page 8

POLICY OUTLINED

EMPIRE MARKETING BOARD. ANSWER TO CRITICISMS. London, February 11. Lord Bledisloe, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, replies, in a letter to the Press, to criticisms levelled at the Empire Marketing Board for its supposed policy of helping the dominions against the Home farmer. “It is,” he writes, “the policy of the board to persuade the British public to support the Home producer wherever he can supply their needs, and only so far as he cannot do so to purchase from the dominions and the colonies, rather than from foreign countries. There is a considerable margin between what the Home producer can supply and what the Home market requires. Our fellow subjects and good customers in British lands scattered over the world already send us much of our inevitable imports. But they are very far from having reached the maximum of their output, and, in consequence, their full capacity for absorbing our exports. Clearly it W’ill be better for all interests (including agricultural) in this country, when the Empire as a whole is more fully developed. In helping to develop it, the Empire Marketing Board fights on two fronts, those of publicity and of research, and in neither case are the pre-eminent claims of the Home producer being overlooked. “As regards publicity an advertisement under the heading ‘There’s no place like Home’ has already been issued and will be followed by others with the same appeal. In the field of research, several of the grants made by the board are of the greatest importance to farmers, fruitgrowers, and market gardeners in this country. A sum of £40,000 has, moreover, been placed by the board at the disposal of the Minister of Agriculture for the purpose of carrying out further investigations into the methods of marketing Home-grown agricultural produce and for educating Home producers as to the possibilities of improvement.” IMPORTANCE OF STANDARD QUALITY. Sir Herbert Matthews, Secretary of the Central Chambers of British Agriculture, who has been seeing the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Immigration in Ottawa, described agricultural conditions in the Old Country as very bad at the present time. Sir Herbert said he would like to see the dominions opening their own stores in the Mother Country for the distribution of their products and the dominions should advertise their products more. He attributed the success of New Zealand in marketing her butter in Britain to the establishment of standard qualities.