USE OF POORER LAND

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25678, 15 December 1948, Page 4

USE OF POORER LAND

RETURNS FROM SHEEP

FARMING RELATIONSHIP OF COSTS AND PRICES (P.A.) WELLINGTON, December 14. Emphasising that sheep farming provided, in most cases, the only possible profitable method of utilising New Zealand’s poorer land, Federated Farmers of New Zealand, in submissions to the Sheep Industry Commission to-day, urged the commission to frame its recommendations on a longterm aspect, rather than to provide palliatives for some of the difficulties apparent to-day. The crux of the problem confronting the industry was the relationship of costs and prices, said the federation’s representatives. The prices which the farmer received were fixed abroad, mainly to-day by negotiation with the United Kingdom Government. The present high prices could not last indefinitely, and therefore New Zealand would be wise to prepare for a recession from the present level. New Zealand’s house had to be set in order, ready to meet the inevitable fall in prices. Suggestions were frequently made that the position could be met by a system of subsidising production from the poorer land, but the federation recommended the commission to examine that proposal carefully. Would it be possible for 20,000.000 acres of poorer land to be subsidised by the rest of New Zealand? While a subsidy would undoubtedly help hill country farmers, in the opinion of the federation it would not be a permanent solution. Shares in National Income For the purpose of initial development, the federation agreed that a subsidy would be of considerable value, but the main difficulties concerned working and maintaining that poorer country. A relatively small decline in overseas prices would bring immediate trouble to the hill country farmer. The vital question, therefore, which the commission had to determine, was whether the rewards received by other sections of the community were proportionate to the effort which they exerted in their production, and the effort exerted by the farmer and farm worker on the poorer land. In recent years, said the federation, the share of the national production which the various sections of the community had received had tended to be determined by the power of pressure groups, rather than by logic. What other sections got tended to determine what land remained in occupation. The federation considered that the economy of the Dominion would never be firmly based until the needs of the land which the nation required to keep up its exports determined what other people in the community could be allowed to draw from the pool of the national production. The federation submitted that the rewards attainable in other industries and undertakings in. New Zealand should be related to the rewards which could be attained on the poorest type of land desired to be kept in production and allowed to be improved. That meant basing the economic structure of New Zealand on the farming industry. A system should be adopted of relating the rewards and remunerations in other industries to those which could be gained on the poorest class of land kept in production. Production from poor hill country land was the key to New Zealand's sheep production. It was only common prudence, therefore, that the nation’s economy should be based on that land, and not allowed to be a haphazard construction under which that land became not the base, but merely an impotent competitor for • a place, added the federation’s submissions.