DAIRY PRODUCE CONTROL

Southland Times, Issue 23942, 7 October 1939, Page 7

DAIRY PRODUCE CONTROL

GUARANTEED PRICE AND HIGH COSTS

INDUSTRY’S SHARE IN WAR SACRIFICE Claiming that because the Government had decided not to increase the guaranteed price for dairy produce for the current season the industry had been contributing from the beginning of the year a great deal in the form of a sacrifice towards the cost of the war, Mr John Fisher, in his presidential address at the annual meeting of Farmers’ Dairy Federation Ltd., yesterday, said that the Minister of Marketing (the Hon. W. Nash) had not taken into consideration the increased costs the industry had had to bear and the greater costs it would bear m the future. ... , , Definite steps had been taken in London, he said, and the position as far as dairy produce was concerned had been determined. The Minister had announced that the same -prices for butter and cheese as last year would rule. He had not seen fit to pay any heed to the repeated demands that the price be increased to cope with the increased cost of production. “You may take it that from the beginning of the year you are already contributing to the country quite a fair share of your sacrifice to carry on the war,” Mr Fisher added. You were to receive the same price as last year, but you have got to shoulder the whole of the increased costs, and any further increases that are bound to arise. Mr Fisher said he had been assured that fanners’ requirements were already up in price. The cheese factories owned the rennet manufacturing industry in New Zealand and the factory was the largest in the world under one building, but even at that it was impossible to keep the price the same as it had been in the last few years. Possibly rennet would go up to £6 a keg instead of £3/15/-. In the last war rennet had cost £4O a keg, and it was found that .it was only 50 per cent strength, so that actually it worked out at £BO a keg for the original strength. New Zealand cheese manufacturers had had for years the cheapest rennet in the world and if. the rennet company were not in existence it was possible that the c.i.f. price would mount as before.

UPWARD TENDENCY “If confidence could be established that costs would not continue rising, he continued, “I am sure that as far as Southland is concerned there would be acknowledgment that the pay-out for both butter and cheese factories during the past season would be considered a fair and just return That happy state of mind is, however, far from being general, as in spite of all protests to the contrary the tendency of costs is upward, and even the Minister of Marketing (the Hon. W. Nash) can 'feive no comforting assurance that he is going to stay them. Till this upward movement is definitely stopped there will be conflict between the industry and the Minister on the price question. Recalling the conditions of the 1914-18 period, and taking into account reports current at present, it may be accepted that in the immediate future and probably for the period, of the war, dairy produce will be requisitioned by the Imperial authorities and the price received by the producer will depend upon the price received from the Imperial Government. During the Great War the price was fixed yearly after conference between our own Government and representatives of the industry. The result of these conferences was communicated to the British authorities and they in turn completed arrangements with the New Zealand Government. This process gave reasonable protection to all interests. “A doubt has been created in the minds of producers that this course is not the intention of the New Zealand Government, as legislation now under consideration by file House seems to point in the direction of control of all produce being assumed by the Government, not as a war measure but as a permanent policy of the Government towards the socialization of production, distribution and exchange.

“While we know we must all combine and lend our utmost help to the fulfilment of the efforts of both our own and the British Governments to win the war, we’ are fully entitled to exercise the utmost vigilence to see that we are not deprived of individual rights now enjoyed. Recognizing the advantages of orderly marketing and the benefits attendant upon a regular monthly price level, ideals for which the industry sought for years, we are still strongly of the opinion that there is grave danger for the future of the industry in bringing its control into the political arena, and I think farmers cannot too strongly resent such a movement. Its adoption means the strangulation of individual freedom and enterprise.” >