The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1934. THE DAIRY INDUSTRY.

Wairarapa Age, 15 March 1934, Page 4

The Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1934. THE DAIRY INDUSTRY.

If a widespread collapse of dairying industry in the Dominion is to be averted, assistance evidently must be rendered without loss of time and on a substantial scale. The principal task of the national conference now sitting in Wellington is to determine how immediate assistance may best and most advantageously be given. The problems raised probably are as perplexing and difficult as any that have ever been raised in New Zealand, but the need for prompt measures of help is plainly defined. Correspondence read by the Prime Minister at the conference conveyed an assurance from the British Government that the question of quota restrictions is not now an immediate one as far as it is concerned. In itself, this intimation will be welcomed, but the total position, as it is now defined, offers little enough prospect of market improvement or other external relief for the dairy industry of the Dominion. The subsidy to be paid oil milk production in Britain must tend in greater or less degree to depreciate the British market from the point of view of all external suppliers. Moreover, the postponement of the quota question is only until the expiration of the Ottawa Agreement, in August next year. 6

Opinion, not only at the conference, biit in the country, appears to be hardening in favour of the payment of a subsidy of some kind to those engaged in dairying industry, but the terms on which a subsidy is to be paid will not easily be determined. One speaker at the conference (Mr. B. Roberts) said that farmers appreciated the benefit of the high exchange, but at the same time realised that they were benefiting at the expense of somebody else. Only a national scheme, he said, was capable of restoring industry to a payable basis. On the facts in sight, however, it seems impossible meantime to devise any national scheme that will in the near future, and failing an improvement of external markets, put the dairying industry independently on a payable basis. A scheme at least of Imperial scope presumably would be needed to achieve that result. The only apparent alternative meantime to a measure of collapse in the dairy industry is that it should be subsidised at the expense of the rest of the community in New Zealand. This raises very difficult questions indeed. Generally speaking, the payment of a subsidy to any industry is justified only as a means of affording permanent and lasting help—that is to say, help that will enable the industry in question progressively to improve its position to a point at which it can dispense with assistance and perhaps repay the amounts it has received by way of subsidy. If these standards were insisted upon in the present crisis of the dairy industry, it might have to be refused any such assistance as is now contemplated. It obviously has a bearing on the claims of dairying, however, that

other and less important industries are being supported by tariff duties on an admittedly uneconomic basis. While considerations of immediate expediency no doubt must rule to a considerable extent in dealing with a problem of this kind, there should be no question of merely granting the dairy industry assistance by way of some form of subsidy and leaving it at that. The inevitable outcome of such a policy would be that in the near future the industry and the country would find themselves faced by greater difficulties than ever. A subsidy that merely gave the industry some support in its weakness would be a curse instead of a blessing. Apart from the longer-range action that should be taken with a view to reorganising the whole economic position of the Dominion and its trading relationships, any grant of immediate financial assistance should be expressly conditional upon the adoption by the industry of a policy of progress that will strengthen its position in every way possible. This policy must include measures, some of which may be drastic, to improve the quality of products, and the most must be made of alternative branches of production, such as pig-raising. The minimum condition insisted upon in granting any kind of subsidy should be that the industry must Decome progressively less dependent on the subsidy with the passage of time. AN A. AND P. RECOVERY. A report presented to the general committee of the Masterton A. and P. Association yesterday disclosed a profit of about £232 on. last month’s Show at Solway, as compared with a loss of £52 last year. This very considerable improvement is gratifying, not alone from a financial standpoint, but on very much wider grounds. In order that it may continue to develop and may serve its full intended purpose,, the Show must, however, pay its way and the change over from loss to profit earning is to be welcomed accordingly. The executive and officials of the association and its host of working members are to be congratulated upon the enterprise with which they have carried on and extended its activities in far from encouraging times. Practical appreciation of their efforts is to be seen in the substantial increase in entry fees recorded this year and in other ways. An interesting development in this connection was the reorganisation of the pig classes, largely in the direction of attracting entries by farmers producing for the market. An extended application of the same general principle may possible in other sections of the Show. The association is doing no more valuable work than in furthering the vocational education of the oncoming generation. Sheep-judg-ing by schoolboys and others and competitive classes for the members of the Wairarapa calf-rearing clubs are both noteworthy in this category. Every effort should be made to increase the educational value of the Show, not only to young people, but to many of those who are already earning a living on the land. With the return of better times for the sheep farmer, the display of competition fleeces and incidental lectures which were up to last year an interesting feature of the Show and one of great educational value no doubt "Will be reinstated.