DAIRY PRODUCE CONTROL.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1420, 25 October 1923, Page 4

DAIRY PRODUCE CONTROL.

A SURPRISINGLY large number of dairy producers, by neglecting to record their votes in the referendum poll, betrayed an indifference about the question whether the Dairy Produce Export Control Act should or should not be brought into operation. Of those whose feeling one way or the other prompted them to vote it is clear that a substantial majority favours the establishment of a pool. They have satisfied themselves, we have no doubt, that it will be to their advantage that the control of the export of their produce should be entrusted to a board composed of producers and that this board should be armed with powers so extensive as to include the right to compel all exports of dairy produce to proceed through the channel directed by it. They have led themselves to believe that the good fortune which has attended the operations ,of the Meat Producers' Board will as a matter of course attend also the operations of a Dairy Producers' Board. We hope they will not be disappointed, but they must remember that the organisation of the Meat Producers' Board has not yet been subjected to any real test, that the Board has never sought to exercise its powers of compulsion, and that the system of control whim

has been inaugurated under it is still in the experimental stage. The Dairy Produce Export Control Act sanctions innovations which many of those active opponents and not a few of the impartial observers regard as mischievous and probably dangerous—with a boomerang effect —and, vvhil we trust that the dairy producers will not have cause to repent the decision they have made, we look with a certain amount of misgiving upon the new departure. It behoves all concerned to exercise a wise discretion in choosing the personnel of the Board of Control. As we indicated last issue, an early pronouncement as to the method of election should be forthcoming, and then we will hear of candidates offering themselves for election. The experience the chief returning office" and his staff had in the recent poll should make it comparatively easy to conduct ; nother if if so happens that there is a plethora of candidates. Advices from Taranaki and parts of the Wellington province predict that there will be no shortage of candidates, despite the efforts of some of those who actively championed the scheme to eliminate competition. Members will not be in the position of directors of dairy or bacon curing companies, and will not therefore have to sign guarantees to the banks or other financial institutions. Lut this fact notwithstanding, the jo) will be an exacting one—and woe betide the Board members if they get the producers into a mess!