POSITION OF DAIRY FARMERS

Southland Times, Issue 23141, 6 March 1937, Page 18

POSITION OF DAIRY FARMERS

To The Editor

Sir.—You were good enough to grant me liberal space to outline my views on land problems. I am certainly not going to enter into a newspaper controversy on the many points I mentioned, especially with such an insulting writer as “Quid Rides?” The farmers of New Zealand do not “stand convicted of having wasted their own and other people’s capital.” We have been caught in the maelstrom of a manmade depression. Here are a few figures from the Dairy Commission report in the first 20 years of this century we increased the yield of butter fat per cow by 251 b and doubled the total production of butter fat per year. Between 1920 and 1934 we increased the butter fat return per cow by 681 b and trebled the production of butter fat per year—not much sign of waste or inefficiency. In spite of this we had to face the terrible decline in prices. Passing over the two years of boom prices, we find that in 1924 cheese prices ranged from 83/- to 105/- per cwt whereas in 1934 they varied from 43/- to 50/-. We were not producing products at costs above returns but we were, at the urgent appeal of our Prime Minister and other leaders, producing products at returns which worked out far below costs. I did not suggest interest free capital for farmers. I advocate doing away with the whole interest system and I am not alone in this. In one thing I quite agree with your correspondent: “It’s a mad world my masters!” It is. Yours, etc., B.C. March 4, 1937.