DAIRY INDUSTRY CRISIS.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1934, Page 6

DAIRY INDUSTRY CRISIS.

If the telegraphed summary of the address given by Mr. W. Grounds to the suppliers of the No. 1 Ward of the Dairy Control Board is correct those who dislike the idea of State interference should take new heart. Mr. Grounds set out to show that the Dairy Commission and the Government were wrongHe presented them with the finest of arguments in favour of a change from the authority of the present Control Board. Mr. Grounds has apparently learned nothing from the industry’s bitter experiences of the past five years. Judging by the resolutions passed after his address had been listened to the farmers of North Auckland appear to think that the Dominion controls the London market, and that if the Dairy Control Board were entirely a producers’ organisation all would be well. They are prepared to “oppose vigorously" quantitative restrictions. So would every dairy farmer in the Dominion if he could see how opposition could be made effective in a market already oversupplied. Mr. Grounds and his friends have to realise that the crisis is real, that the Government of Great Britain has taken a hand in the control of dairy imports whether the Dominion likes it or not, and that if public policy is linked with trading arrangements Government “interference’’ is forced upon New Zealand however much it may run counter to preconceived ideas and desires. If Mr. Grounds, or any other would-be leader, is satisfied that the industry is not “seriously sick" his leadership should be shunned forthwith. There was a lack of any practical alternative in all Mr. Ground's criticism of the Commission and the Government. Yet reflection in Taranaki on the policy so strenuously defended by Mr. Grounds and his friends in 1926 may give rise to the conclusion that in this crisis also his judgment is at fault. It is not “vigorous opposition" to but close cooperation with Great Britain that is essential to the dairy industry’s health.