LIME FOR FARMERS.

Waikato Times, Volume 110, Issue 18405, 12 August 1931, Page 3

LIME FOR FARMERS.

DECENTRALISATION. MR BROADFOOT’S SUGGESTION. SMALL LOCALISED PLANTS. (Special to Times.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. Decentralisation in the manufacture of lime for agricultural purposes and the establishment of small localised crushing plants handy to the many deposits in the North Island was advocated by Mr W. J. Broadfoot (United —Waitomo) in the course of his speech on the financial statement in the House of Representatives to-day. The big centralised plants, he contended, were resting too heavily on Government subsidy. By the encouragement of decentralised plants the price of lime to the farmers could be cheapened. Mr Bro’adfoot said that very valuable assistance had been given by the Agricultural Department to the primary producers of the country, in searching last year's expenditure he found that the Department of Agriculture and the Railway Department had jointly incurred expenditure of £168,000 as subsidies on the carriage of lime and fertiliser—£4B,ooo on lime and £120,000 on fertiliser. The Leader of the Opposition, the Rt. Hon J. G. Coates: Would you cut them out? Mr Broadfoot: No, but no doubt the right honourable gentleman would do tnat. I would seek business methods of bringing better service to the farmer at a lower price. It can be done if one uses his brains. Mr A. Hamilton (Reform—Wallace) : Put up the railway freights. Mr Broadfoot: No, I would make the same reply to the honourable member for Wallace. Deposits Readily Available. Mr Broadfoot wetU on to say that the lime deposits in this country were well distributed, it would be found that lime deposits were readily available In nearly every farming district. He suggested that the small capitalised lime plants should be encouraged and that the centralisation of manufacture should be discouraged, because that centralised manufacture was dependent entirely on the huge railway subsidy he had referred to. Mr R. A. Wright (Reform—Wellington Suburbs) : But you will not get the department to support that. Mr Broadfoot: I cannot help it if the department will not support it; I am giving my views on how it can be done. Mr c. H .Clinkard (United —Rotorua): That is the first thing. Mr Broadfoot contended that small plants could be placed at points all over the North Island. He had investigated the situation from his own town s point of view’. From the Hauraki Gulf, from Hawke's Bay, from Wanganui, from the middle of the North Island, in fact from wherever one liked to go, would be found avail- I able lime deposits. These deposits : could be converted into agricultural I lime at a very cheap price and by treating zones and prohibiting one com- I pany from trading In the territory of I another the farmers would be edu- I cated to deal with the lime companies i operating within the zone in which they resided. Mr Coates: Is competition too keen now. Development at the Thames. Mr Broadfoot: I do not think competition is too keen at all, but I do think the big centralised plants are resting too heavily on Government I subsidy and that never gets any in- ■ dustry out of difllculty. Only fair competition does that. Reference was made by Mr Broadfoot to the development of the lime industry at th'e Thames. The lime from there, he contended, should be utilised for the Hauraki Plains, the Bay of Plenty, and the Northern Waikato, but it should not be allowed to go to the southern end of the Waikato. That district should get its suppplies from other sources. The same principle should be applied all over NewZealand.

So far as the fertiliser was concerned Mr Broadfoot said fertiliser works should get together and pool their resources, pool their knowledge and endeavour to cut down the cost of production and transport to the farmer. He felt that the fertiliser works to-day were somewhat out ot date In connection with the commodities they manufactured. In 1914 the importations of fertilisers into New Zealand amounted to 100,000 tons and in 1930 the amount had increased to 335,276 tons. If that fertiliser could be manufactured m New Zealand—and he held that the only way to endeavour to do that manufacturing was for the fertiliser works to rationalise the industry then he thought we could by quantity production reduce the cost of fertiliser to the farmer. The big increase in the use of fertiliser had, in the main, been caused by the cheap freights that the Department of Agriculture and the Bailway Department extended to the farmers. He felt that the fertiliser works, having been given all that increased trade, should most certainly face up to their difficulties. They should get together and endeavour to lower their cost of production In the same way that the industries in the Old Country were facing up to it now and cutting down their costs.