BRITISH FARMERS’ DELEGATION

Southland Times, Issue 25565, 8 January 1945, Page 4

BRITISH FARMERS’ DELEGATION

PROGRAMME FOR REST OF TOUR Members of the United Kingdom farmers’ delegation, Messrs J. Turner, W. Young, G. Ervine and S. O. Ratcliff, who have been visiting Southland, left Invercargill for Dunedin on Saturday morning. The party is due to arrive in Christchurch this evening. In Christchurch the visitors will meet Mr W. W. Mulholland, Dominion president of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union, and they will leave tomorrow .evening for Wellington, where a conference is to be held with the Dominion executive of the Farmers’ Union. The delegates will then travel to Auckland, visiting parts of the North Island that they have not already seen. They will later visit Australia. The delegates arrived in Auckland on December 13 and travelled to Wellington by way of the west coast. On this portion of their tour they had an opportunity of studying dairy farming methods in the Waikato and Taranaki and inspected cheese and butter factories and meat freezing works. During the Christmas holiday period the party split up, members going as the guests of farmers in various parts of the country. The delegation arrived at Picton on December 29 and. after a stay in Blenheim went on to Nelson, where the Cawthron Institute was a centre of interest. They later travelled down the West Coast and then crossed to Canterbury and came on to Southland by way of Central Otago. The Dominion secretary of the Farmers’ Union, Mr A. P. O’Shea, is acting as guide to the party throughout the tour. OBJECT OF VISIT “The object of the visit is to discuss with fellow primary producers in New Zealand, Australia and Canada 'postwar problems confronting their industry and to prepare the ground for dealing with these problems on the basis of collaboration between nations,” according to a statement to the Press made by Mr Turner, the leader of the delegation, during his visit to Invercargill. It was essential that the victory 'of arms should be followed by victory over peacetime problems if the foundations of permanent peace and security for all nations were to be. laid, the statement added. Each nation would have its own problems of production and trade, but the experience of economic chaos and depression in the years between the wars was sufficient reason for trying to tackle the difficulties in unison, not as isolated units. Even before the war there was an unquestionable case for getting together to deal with the difficulties of world agricultural production and marketing. This was made clear in the discussions at the Empire Producers’ Conference at Sydney in 1938. After the war the need for this collaboration would be even greater, because of the economic changes during the war years in the economic position of each nation.