More “Stabilization”

Southland Times, Issue 23165, 5 April 1937, Page 6

More “Stabilization”

The Government’s intention to stabilize the butter market was announced in a Press Association message from Christchurch printed on Saturday. The stabilization scheme, according to the Director of Internal Marketing (Mr F. R. Picot), will first be brought into operation in Wellington and will later be extended to other centres. Schemes to control other produce—eggs and honey, for a start —will be introduced subsequently. “It is the Government’s intention to coordinate the selling of primary produce,” said Mr Picot ... “I am firmly convinced that ultimately the stabilization of markets generally will be of substantial benefit to consumers and producers both . . .” The extent of the

•benefits that “consumers and producers both” are receiving from these schemes of State control—introduced variously in the name of stabilization, co-ordina-tion, or orderly marketing—was well illustrated in two reports which appeared on the same page as the account of Mr . Picot’s plans. One of them announced that the effect in Southland of the stabilization scheme for bacon would be an increase in the retail price of “not more than a penny a pound.” The price in the South Island, it was explained, had hitherto been lower than in the North, but “the new schedule” would result in “a levelling-up of prices” so that there would be one price right through the Dominion. Consumers in the South Island will, no doubt, be properly thankful for the “benefit” of paying a penny more for their bacon. The other report, also from Christchurch, described a meeting of onion growers called to protest against the new marketing regulations which “are said to have hampered trade to the point of total restriction.” The growers issued a statement declaring that “marketing has never been in a more hopeless condition . . . The grades fixed for onions are considered to be based on an insufficient knowledge of the onion crop, and the regulations on the whole are roundly condemned as being irritating without being of any benefit to the growers. . .” This is the way in which one section of producers has expressed appreciation of the “benefit” of what has been called “orderly marketing.” And there is little doubt that as the Government interferes with the marketing of other foodstuffs the volume of protest will grow. Producers, traders and consumers are finding out for themselves the cost of these attempts at the State regulation of business.