FRUIT SUBSIDY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 211, 6 August 1937, Page 8

FRUIT SUBSIDY.

ORCHARDISTS’ PROPOSAL. WELLINGTON, Aug. 5. Orchardists are dissatisfied with the proposed method of allocating the £40,000 set aside by the Government to compensate them for higher wages paid to labour in the production of fruit for the local market. The subject was fully discussed at tho annual conference <of the New Zealand Fruitgrowers’ Federation at Wellington to-day. It was decided, on the motion of Mr W. A. Tate, Wairarapa, to urge that the £40,000 be distributed by means of a flat rate subsidy per case to growers, irrespective of prices received, the share of Hawke’s Bay and other districts, whose crops were destroyed by frost, to be based on half of the previous year’s production. It was also decided to ask that a progress payment from the £40,000 should be made immediately, to enable growers to retain their staffs. The proposal at present is that the net average return to growers as a whole should be madoup to 4s fid a case by the flat-rate distribution of so much a case, no distribution being made if tho net average return to the industry as a whole is more than 4s 6d. This, speakers at the conference pointed out, would mean that, if the net average return were 4s, the grower who sold his fruit at 6s would receive the same amount per case as the grower who sold at 3s.