EMPIRE FARMERS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3818, 7 October 1936, Page 2

EMPIRE FARMERS

FAIRNESS TO OVERSEAS DOMINIONS. “Wei must all earnestly strive to evolve a long-range plan which will save the efficient farmer in the Old Land from bankruptcy, be acceptable to the great British proletariat and lair to our overseas Dominions,” said Lord Bledisloe, former GovernorGeneral of New Zealand, in a recent broadcast address on Home agriculture. “This must be the common aim of farmers throughout the Empire, and in seeking it we must never be tempted to drift apart. “If our consumption of milk were raised to the level of that in the United States, Sweden and Switzerland, there would be- no glut of milk or milk products in our markets, even if our dairy farmers produced their maximum, and the present exportable surplus of butter and cheese from. New Zealand and Australia entered them without any restriction.”

The case for the consumer —and for the Dominions—will no doubt be powerfully reinforced by the influence of British shipping and industrial interests in any consideration of proposals to tax or otherwise restrict Empire imports. The New Zealand dairy authorities in London were therefore well advised in releasing to the British Press details regarding the £11,000,0011 freight contract which the New Zealand Government had negotiated with British shipping interests for the. carriage of Dominion meat, fruit and dairy produce f o Biitain. Practically every newspaper of importance in the country has given prominence to the announcement, and the editorial comment of the Manchester Daily Dispatch is typical: “Congratulations to New Zealand Government,” it says. “British ships, manned by British seamen, for British goods. That is the only way to meet the menace of foreign subsidised shipping. Other Dominions please copy.”

Sir John Haslam, M.P. for Bolton, and an old friend of New Zealand, has a word of good advice for northern housewives in a recent letter to the Press. Commenting on an official report that a proportion of mothers and children in Lancashire were suffering from, insufficient consumption of milk and milk products, he says: “While poverty is undoubtedly one of the principal causes of many working-class parents not obtaining a sufficiency of these foods for themselves and their children, I would point out that plentiful supplies of two of the most essential milk foods namely, butter and cheese can to-day be purchased at prices within the reach of the great majority of the population.

“New Zealand butter and cheese, for example, are, being retailed at prices which are actually below the pre-war level. Yet our average weekly consumption of butter is no more than half a pound a head and of cheese as little as three ounces a week! The fact that a fully adequate diet, including generous supplies of dairy products, can be provided at a minimum cost, has been proved conclusively by the National Council of Social Service and allied organisatior»; in their administration of a chain of seaside holiday camps, to which 50,0(4; children from the distressed areas are being sent this summer.

“The butter ration in these camps is three times the average national consumption, and the ipilk and cheese ration is correspondingly high. Remarkable improvements, as a result of this dietary, are. reported in the physical condition of the children, many of whom come from Lancashire and other northern counties. All of these considerations, I submit, impel one to the conclusion that proper feeding is very much a matter of wise spending. This is particularly true in view of the curious willingness of northern housewives generally to pay higher prices for foreign butter, in spite of the cheapness and more constant nutritive value of the Dominion variety.”