SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS— M. 415 



are generally unco-ordinated and on a national basis. Finally attempts may 

 be made by international agreement to limit supplies offered in world 

 markets by export quotas, centralised plan for withholding stocks, and 

 restriction of production, e.g. Chadbourne Sugar Scheme. 



Many of these schemes are designed as purely emergency measures. If 

 prices rose, producers themselves might be the first to demand their removal. 

 But some are designed as permanent measures of economic planning, as 

 under the Agricultural Marketing Act in the United Kingdom. 



Pre-requisites of successful permanent planning are (i) greater stability 

 in the purchasing power of money (a field offering the clearest scope for 

 world planning) and (2) more accurate, complete and up-to-date economic 

 intelligence. (Statistics of stocks are specially deficient.) 



Regulation of supplies is a matter of degree. Schemes may be divided 

 into two main categories : (i) regulation of flow of supplies to avoid short- 

 term fluctuations, e.g. South American chilled beef shipments ; and (2) regu- 

 lation of stocks and production with a view to maintenance of a remunerative 

 price level, e.g. coffee and sugar. Schemes of the former kind present far 

 fewer difficulties than the latter, and where successful represent a per- 

 manent advance in the technique of agricultural marketing. 



Mr. F. J. Prewett. — The milk marketing dilemma. 



Milk is a standard commodity, of fluctuating production and constant 

 demand, but, at lowest production, equal to consumptive demand. Varia- 

 tions in production make necessary an alternative utilisation of this season- 

 ably recurring surplus in some less perishable form than milk — that is, in 

 the form of butter, cheese, cream, condensed and dried milk. In addition, 

 there are large parts of the country where liquid consumption cannot 

 account for more than a very small proportion of the milk output, so that 

 manufacture on a large scale is always required. But, owing to the 

 natural protection from imports which the liquid market enjoys, and the 

 consequently higher price that is represented for milk imports in the form 

 of butter, cheese, etc., every milk producer who is marginal, or even outside 

 the range of the liquid market, endeavours to sell on it rather than turn his 

 milk into commodities which come into direct competition with low-priced 

 imports. As a result of this conflict within the home industry, of a pro- 

 tected and an open market, agreements towards ' rationalisation,' which 

 in reality have been confined to the liquid trade, have broken down. No 

 ' rationalisation ' will be achieved until the whole dairy industry, liquid and 

 manufacturing, is regarded as a single unit, with milk as the commodity, no 

 matter whether sold liquid or made into butter or cheese. This involves 

 a flat price for all milk, and some sacrifice in money from the favoured 

 producers for the liquid market in order to secure themselves from the 

 encroachment of manufacturing producers, whose mere existence at present 

 depresses liquid prices and makes effective price and supply stabilisation 

 impossible. 



Mr. T. G. Henderson. — Agricultural marketing organisation in 

 Scotland. 



The organisation of farmers in Scotland for the marketing of agricultural 

 produce has lagged behind that for the purchase of agricultural require- 

 ments, and that because the former type of organisation encounters numerous 

 factors of great difficulty and no little complexity. The diflficulties of 

 adjusting agricultural production to market demand, and the effect of 



