The Wanganui Chronicle. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1942. PRIMARY PRODUCTION IN WARTIME

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 307, 30 December 1942, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1942. PRIMARY PRODUCTION IN WARTIME

r piIEKE is a general feeling of apprehension that the problems which confront the Dominion in respect to wartime production of primary products are not being met. What there is to justify this apprehension it is difficult to say. Certainly the farmers feel that in Mr. Barclay they have not a friend, but an enemy, in charge of agriculture and marketing. This is unsatisfactory from the. start, creating feelings of frustration in anything that relates to the farmers’ endeavours to help the Government on the production side. The farmers feel that the misunderstandings that occur in respect to manpower problems are generated by a lack of goodwill in the heart and mind of the Minister. The Minister would be wise to endeavour to dispel this antipathy to himself because it constitutes a wide gulf. The general understanding is that the Minister is not sufficiently concerned with the welfare of the farming section of the community to present their case to the Government, and that this unconcern goes further and becomes actual hostility. This belief in the Minister’s hostility to those who should be his own wards is based primarily on the Government’s action in retaining the 15 per cent, bonus paid by the United Kingdom on wool. There are sound reasons for withholding as much spending power from being exercised on consumer goods as it is possible to withhold, but the method which the Government has adopted in the matter of the wool bonus has been the wrong one and Mr. Barclay has been saddled with the opprobrium which attaches to the use of the wrong method in this instance. It should, nevertheless, be remembered that when Mr. Nash was Minister of Marketing he overshadowed Mr. Barclay as Minister of Agriculture, and it may be that Mr. Barclay has not yet emerged from the shadows in which his Ministerial career was launched. Mr. Barclay and Mr. Nash have on occasion proved their willingness to entertain new ideas, and it will be remembered that it was the New Zealand Meat Producers’ Board that was responsible for the delaying action which was fought in New Zealand against the conditioning of meat for export in order to conform to wartime shipping conditions. When what came to be called the “Timbs Plan” had attracted notice in the far-off United States of America, the opposition to the proposals was being strenuously continued by the members of the Aleat Board, the very men who should have been first in the field to promote the adoption of the proposals then being advanced. It has now been demonstrated beyond cavil that the Timbs Plan, which the Chronicle advocated from the first time that those proposals were advanced, has been an unqualified success. This is evidenced by an extract from the Meat Tracies’ Journal of August 13, 1942, under the heading of “Quarter of Meat Shipping Saved.” The paragraph reads as follows: “Boned beef is saving the country 25 per cent, of the total meat shipping,” said Lord Woolton at the Ministry on Tuesday. Two years ago he came to the conclusion that we should not want to import bones into this country so much as meat, and he asked all those importers of meat who, in the past, had taken so much pride in bringing in a per-fectly-dressed earcase, to put their pride in their pocket for the duration of the war and bring in boned meat. “They wanted a lot of persuasion, and if we had not persuaded them the meat ration would have been less than it is. The reason why we have been able to keep the meat ration at Is 2d (and you will remember there was a time when I suggested that it would probably go lower), is because beef is coming into this country boned, Krom some places all of it is coming like this. Other places send 85 per cent, boned, and from others 55 per cent. The sum total of this means that we are saving 25 per cent, of our meat shipping space. The deboning applies mainly to beef.” There was a. Gilbertian farce being played out in 1940: In England the Minister of Food was searching for ways and means to reduce shipping space, while in New Zealand one man was lighting against those who should have been advocating the deboning process, the very means that, the Minister in England was advocating. Yet it is the same men who opposed this method who are still in charge of the meat export industry in New Zealand. Can New Zealand meet its wartime problems with brains that have been proved to be obsolete; The foregoing is recited not because it is desired to prove that, a past, advocacy has been justified by subsequent experience, but. to point to the fact that this Dominion cannot wait until it is asked by the United Kingdom authorities to do something, but should endeavour to discover for itself the new developments as they occur. To-day cheese is piling up in the United Kingdom and it. is now very much in over supply. It would be more desirable if butter were produced and sent to the United Kingdom, for if the present state of affairs continues there will be a. shutdown on cheese because it is no longer wanted. It may be argued that this will be the business of the United Kingdom, but it. is more than that, and an intolli"ent attitude toward the problem should be exercised in New Zealand now. Mr. Barclay would be well advised to make a proper review of the situation from the standpoint of the demand in the United Kingdom, present and potential, and he should initiate discussions with the I nited Kingdom Ministry of Food to see whether a. switch-over from cheese, to butter should be undertaken right away