PLAIN SPEAKING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19959, 17 November 1934, Page 15

PLAIN SPEAKING

| THE BRITISH FARMER "WHY PITY HIM" Reynold’s News, a newspaper which I is not always on the side of the major- ! ity, asks, “Why pity the British farmer?” The writer of the article says he has no sympathy for the British farmer. He proceeds:— “Why should he have my sympathy, or anybody else’s First,. I ask myself, "Why is the New Zealand farmer able to ship his produce 12,000 miles and still outsell the British farmer?” I “Yes, I know that in New Zealand cattle can be kept out all the year j round I know that the New Zealand farmer hasn’t the winter feeding costs that the farmer at home has to face. But 12,000 miles is a long way, and the New Zealand farmer’s shipping costs and his packing expenses must be considerable. And he certainly in normal times pays his men more. What the New Zealand farmer does have, however, is an efficient system of co-operation, an effective marketing system, careful grading, and, throughout, he employs scientific method. Next I look at the Danish farmer. When he found himself faced with ruin after the loss to Germany of the wheat-producing provinces of Schles-wig-Holstein he searched for a new kind of market and found it in the dairy and bacon requirements of Great Britain. Study of the Market ! Having found the market, he studied it, and to satisfy the idiosyncrasies of British taste in bacon eventually succeeded in breeding a hog that produces exactly the type of bacon that is preferred in the majority of English homes—that is to say. a bacon with the right proportion of fat and lean. To the British farmer, who has been whining since I was a boy, this is “unfair foreign competition,” and the Danish farmer is being hammered for it just now by the “popular” papers that imagine themselves to be the particular friends of the British farmer. Has the British farmer co-operated? Only in whining and in endeavouring to pull political strings to his own advantage and against the consumer, which means, by overwhelming majority, the workers. Has the British farmer determined to satisfy the taste of the consumer? Has he organised continuous and scientific distribution? Everybody knows he has not. Then, why should he be confirmed in his stupidity by the receipt of millions of the taxpayers’ money ? Not Good Enough The shopkeeper will tell you that no apple has the taste of the English apple, but with the exception of the limited, expensive, and luxury brands intended for the “upper classes,” Eng lish apples are the dirtiest and scrub- ! biest on the market And if you want a bad egg, buy some new-laid direct at the farm. Yet, with all his complaining, the British farmers’ product fetches the highest prices. English tomatoes are dearer than Dutch, English butter is dearer than New Zealand and Australian, though often inferior. The tale of the English farmer is not good enough. Even the “National” Government knows that, and every now and then finds itself obliged to threaten (with its tongue in its cheek) that if the British farmer does not begin to bestir himself, something will | have to be done about those subsidies. I should think so!