HELPING THE FARMER.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1932, Page 4

HELPING THE FARMER.

The suggested “stabilisation” of local butter prices outlined by Mr. A. J. Sinclair, Te Awamutu, is one which deserves the most careful consideration. Briefly, it proposes control of the price at which butter may be sold to retailers by’dairy companies. It does not suggest control of the whey butter which is made at cheese factories, and farm-made supplies, or interference with the selling price adopted by retailers. It is hoped by such a scheme to prevent uneconomic competition between dairy factories for the local trade, and it will be generally conceded that there is room for improvement in this direction. The suggestion is that a committee of the Dairy Produce Board should fix the price for supplies to local retailers, subject to the approval of the Minister of Agriculture, such price to be the f.o.b. parity of export butter with adjustments fortnightly in sympathy with the London market. There is little to take exception to in such a basis of price, nor in the suggested charge of lid. to cover patting and distributing charges from factory to storekeeper, though this allowance seems rather generous than otherwise. It is suggested that a storekeeper’s profit of 2d. per pound would not be unreasonable, but this is left to the discretion Of the retailer. So far there is little to which the average purchaser need take exception. But the Sinclair plan goes further. It includes a premium of 2d. per lb. over'London parity for butter sold locally. Funds so obtained would be accumulated and distributed yearly to all butter-xnaklng companies in proportion to their total output for the year. Indirectly this is subsidising the butter-making industry at the expense of the consumer, and it contains the defects as well as the advantages of such a method of assisting the farmer. If it is adopted the question will be asked why not cheese, meat, why not woollen goods, why not anything that is produced locally? Against that argument the dairy farmer may justly claim that he is already feeling the cost’ of high prices for commodities he requires while he must sell his product in the open market. Whether the butter factory suppliers are really acting in their own interests by asking the consumer to pay an increase of 3>ld. a lb. in price, and possibly prejudicing his goodwill by so doing, in order to gain an additional two-fifths of a penny in their pay-out is a question that should be thoroughly investigated. It

may be that subsidies will be considered imperative if relief for the primary producer is to be afforded. If so, the Sinclair proposals are at least simple and direct. They would make the funding of such a subsidy a nation-wide effort, they would eliminate most of the usual costs of collection of such funds, and they would leave the control of the subsidy within the dairy industry. Any scheme proposed • for the aid of the farmer will have its weaknesses and its critics. The Sinclair plan, like all other relief suggestions, must be judged in the light of the position in which the dairy industry stands to-day, and upon the widest effects of the attempts to help. The scheme certainly presents a case which before it is answered is deserving of careful and sympathetic consideration.