EMPIRE FARMERS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18536, 5 April 1930, Page 10 (Supplement)

EMPIRE FARMERS

CO-OPERATION v. TRADITION. *1 -8' VALUE OF ORGANISED MARKETING. Commenting editorially on the departure of the delegation of British fr rmers on their trip to New Zealand, the Yorkshire Post perceives a high practical value in the interchange of visits. Farming systems must necessarily differ in countries so widely separated as are the units of the British Empire, and it is of technical interest to examine how each adapts itself to its own peculiar condition (says the writer). But the aim is broadly the same. However much they may seek to protect and foster their urban industries, the overseas Dominions are predominantly agricultural, and look to the Mother Country as the chief market for their abounding surplus of food. This, indeed, the British farmer has learnts to his cost in many ways. But at least the British farmer has his own market at his own door, and this is a natural advantage that none can take from him. The questions arises, however. “Does he make the most of it. and, if not. why not?"

To answer these questions would be to furnish a key to a large share of our current agricultural afflictions, and one of the lessons to be derived from travel and observation, such as that now to be undertaken, lies in a firsthand acquaintance with competing

methods—the means, for instance, whereby the farmers of Australia and New Zealand are able to annul the handicap of 10.000 miles of distance, and sell many of their products here at a price with which British farmers cannot compete.

The reason, of course, is not far to seek. It is to be found in combined effort, and all that the term co-opera-tion implies. Circumstances in agriculture, however, are rarely identical, and it is so in this case. The broad difference is while our Antipodean cousins are obliged to co-operate, the same overwhelming compulsion does not apply here. Tradition, moreover, is all the other way. Yet even tradition in now yielding ground—under the

spell, it is true, of hard necessity—and perhaps the charging process will operate more rapidly than many think. New ways must first prove themselves, for, wisely, the British farmer has always been more impressed by practical example than by precept. Not long ago Sir John Russell also made an agricultural sojourn in the Antipodes, and he has told us that out of every shilling spent by the English housewife on New Zealand butter, | ninepence goes to the New Zealand | farmer who produces the milk. Here | the proportion for the man who sells . liquid milk is more like sixpence inI stead of ninepence. “That,” says Sir | John Russell, “is where big organised marketing helps.” It does.