QUOTA ON DAIRY PRODUCE

Taranaki Daily News, 27 September 1933, Page 9

QUOTA ON DAIRY PRODUCE

NECESSITY FOR IMPOSITION

BRITISH DELEGATE’S VISIT. MR. BAXTER AT NEW PLYMOUTH. DOMINION’S POSITION EXPLAINED. A very definite assurance of the necessity for the imposition of a quota upon New Zealand cheese imports into Great Britain was given by Mr. Thomas Baxter, a representative of the National Farmers’ Union of England and Wales who is visiting New ZeZaland to confer with the Government on the position of the dairy industry and its exports to Britain, at a dinner which was tendered to him at New Plymouth last night. Representatives of local bodies and of the farming community were present, the chairman being Mr. E. E. Blyde, president of the North Taranaki executive of the Farmers’ Union.

The position of the dairy industry in New Zealand was put before Mr. Baxter by Mr. W. J. Polson, M.P., who proposed the toast of the industry. The occasion was most important, he said, in that there was present the representative of the dairy, industry of Great Britain and the chairman of the organisation controlling the whole of the milk supplies of the country. Dairying was a most essential industry which in Taranaki was all important and on which the province depended. More than any other it had made for the development of the country, which, had been rapid and which must continue.

They saw in Denmark what the dairy industry could do without any of the advantages .that New Zealand had. New Zealand, with ten times the acreage, an infinitely better soil and climatic advantages, must continue to develop, and the dairy industry must continue to play a leading part in that development. New Zealand had reached the point in common with other countries where the development of primary industries had caught up with consumption, creating a glut that was embarrassing to primary producers in other parts of the world as. here. SENTIMENT CAST ASIDE. “We are told that increased dairy production has the effect of embarrassing the British farmer to an extent that we do not appreciate and that the position* is so acute that either they or we are ‘for it’,” continued Mr. Polson; “Mr. Baxter has been very frank. He has taken the gloves off and cast all sentiment aside. He tells us that the British farmer is entitled to his own market and that we must come second and the foreigner third, that the British Government is committed to a policy of restriction of our product and that no trade advantage we may hold Dor the question of ability to repay our indebtedness to England may count. He has begun to shock us into more wakefulness than we ever had before. We must also be frank.

“We are a British country. An examination of our imports will show probably that in proportion we use more British goods than even Britain. We are all British with the feelings of our fathers and some of ourselves who came from the old country. We' have done our best to develop the Empire and in doing so we have been more helpful to Britain than any other undertaking would have been. We. appeal to the British nation not to sacrifice us in anything that may be done in the matter of quotas unless it can be shown it will help the Empire as a whole.” Mr. Polson said he was not sure that restrictions of New Zealand ' produce would have the desired effect, and ■he asked for further information about the position. There was the opportunity to give the matter careful consideration during the two years that the Ottawa agreement would be in effect. New Zealand wanted to know what the position was in Britain and what 'price the farmer expected for the sale of his product, so that a comparison could be made with New Zealand. “Let us make economic comparisons and ascertain whether to cripple us temporarily will be good business for the nation even if it offers temporary advantages to the British farmer.”