UNITY WANTED IN INDUSTRY

Southland Times, Issue 23839, 9 June 1939, Page 8

UNITY WANTED IN INDUSTRY

VIEWS OF CHAIRMAN OF DAIRY BOARD ATTITUDE TO GUARANTEED PRICE (Special to The Times) DUNEDIN, June 8. Satisfaction that important remits on the conference order paper concerned the “so-called” guaranteed price was expressed by the chairman of the New Zealand Dairy Board (Mr W. E. Hale), who addressed the South Island Dairy Conference today. He said he wondered whether the guaranteed price should not be known as a stabilized price. Mr Hale emphasized to the conference the necessity for unanimity on main issues if the interests of the industry were to be fully secured. The Dairy Board had interested itself in the gathering of costs, data, and in association with representatives of the South Island Dairy Association, the National Dairy Association and the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, it had requested the Government to alter the original personnel of the Guaranteed Price Regulating Committee. . Mr Hale said it was regretted that in the discussion at the last Dominion conference, a remit was altered at a later stage to set up an advisory committee to recommend the price that should be paid, rather than to fix it. The board appreciated the assistance of the association and other bodies and he asked for a continuance of that cooperation. That was the most important matter to the dairy industry today, and he urged that the conference at least endorse the principle of making representatives available for consultation with the board on any questions as they arose. . The board was greatly concerned with the decrease in production of the South Island, which was a very serious matter indeed, and it had been trying to obtain some statistical data on the subject. It had to be admitted that it had been a very unsatisfactory season from a climatic point of view. Southland was the only province in the Dominion that could claim anything like a satisfactory productive season. Its investigations were demonstrating to the board that climatic conditions were not solely responsible for the drop in production. 1 On the information that it had been possible to gather, the board estimated that there were between 60,000 and 70,000 fewer cows being milked this year. Dairymen were not allowing any such state of affairs to come about for any reason other than that there was not a decent profit left in the industry. There was a section, of which the Minister himself was one representative, which said that there was nothing wrong with the industry. There might be a reason for that attitude on well established farms, but Mr Hale said he would not like to be bringing new land into production today. “The price might be all right if the cost factor were right,” he said.