A TOO-ROSEATE VIEW

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 157, 5 July 1934, Page 3

A TOO-ROSEATE VIEW

PLIGHT OF THE FARMER AS MB. ACLAND SEES IT. Mr. H. D. Acland, president of the New Zealand yheep Owners’ Federation, joins issue with Mr. L. R. C. Macfarlane, retiring president of the Royal Agricultural Society. It will be recalled that Mr. Macfarlane recently •tated that “for many this year has been the best since 1914. M Mr. Macfarlane ’s statement came as a pleasant surprise to many who had been under the impression that, after all, the farmer was not in such a bad way as his political and other friends had said he was. Mr. Macfarlane was, no doubt, speaking from his own experience when be congratulated farmers on the almost record output, both in quantity and quality of production, anti in the high working profits which had enabled most of the losses of the last four years to be paid off. Experience of some of the banks is understood to be in the direction of supporting Mr. Macfarlane, for a number of pastoral firms that had been leaning rather heavily on their bankers are now in credit with relatively substantial deposits. Some of them too, it is reported, have fairly considerable gums offered to them on deposit by their farmer clients. However, Mr. Acland, out of his experience in a statement made to the Christchurch Press, tells a different tale, from which it is to be inferred that Mr. Macfarlane’s views were of too roseate a hue. lie is reported to have said that the average price for wool in New Zealand this year in New Zealand currency is just about lid per lb. and in sterling it would be between Sd'and 9d per lb. Ln 1924 the average price of wool for the Dominion in sterling was 20|d, and this year’s average price was not up to any of the average prices received for the years from 1924 to 1929 when the slump set in. “For the 20 weeks of this year,’’ Mr. Acland continued, “New Zealand lamb had averaged 7 3-8 d on Smithfield. The highest price for lamb from 1923 to 1930 on Smithfield was in 1925, when it averaged 11.83 d., and the lowest price from 1923 to 1930 was in the latter year, when the average price was 8.77 d.” Mr. Acland saw no need to mention any figures in regard to butter, as •very body was well acquainted with the desperate position of the dairy farmer. The price fixed for wheat this year was about 3s. whereas six or seven years ago it had been as high as 6s 6xl downwards. His own experience of sheep farmers’ balance-sheets, of which he had seen many, was that some had not made sufficient to pay full interest on the first mortgage this year; in other cases full interest and portion of the arrears had been paid, but he knew of no cases where the arrears hail been fully disposed of, except where these had been written off under the statutory powers vested in the Adjustment Commission and the Supreme Court under the Mortgagors Relief Act. With sheep farmers, the rise in prices had improved their credit, but not their tpending power, as any surplus was used in reduction of arrears of interest, or in reduction of the stock firms’ overdrafts. It was a pity, Mr. Acland concluded, that an erroneous impression should be given as to the financial position of the primary producers in New Zealand,