FARM INCOMES COMPARED

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27498, 4 November 1954, Page 14

FARM INCOMES COMPARED

PROGRESS OVER FIFTY YEARS

ADDRESS TO GRASSLAND ASSOCIATION (From Our Own Reporter) NELSON, November 3. In his presidential address to the annual conference of the New Zealand Grassland Association tonight, Mr G. A. Holmes’ quoted comparative incomes of typical farms 50 years ago and today. A 100-acre dairy farm with production and prices of 1904 would return ,£2OO for the season. J’oday the gross revenue would be £2BOO. A typical 300 acre sheepfarm in one of the higher rainfall districts which in 1904 brought in £3OO, in 1954 would return £4400. Today the money income of both the intensive dairy farm and the mass production fat lamb farm had appreciated 14 times, said Mr Holmes. A farmer working a 300« acre mixed cropping farm did not show up in such a blaze of prosperity. He had doubled his ewe flock, partly at the expense of his crop acreage, and had replaced his farm-bred and farm-fed horse team by imported petrol consuming power units. His gross income 50 years ago would have been £l3OO compared with nearly four times as .much — £sloo—today. It would be interesting to dissect complete profit and loss accounts for eaeh type of farm to arrive at the net income, said Mr Holmes, and to show what proportion of the increase in gross income could fairly be ascribed to technical advances in production, how much to increase in overseas prices due to the scarcity value of livestock products, and how much to inflation of the currency.

If inflation was measured by the increase in the price of gold in 1954, incomes would have to be divided by 3 as a correction factor, but a more realistic correction might be obtained by dividing by 4 which was in line with the increase in the wholesale price index which in 1904 was 628 and in 1954 2546. On. this basis it could be shown that the 100 acre dairy farm earned three and a half to four times what it did at the beginning of the century, and so did the intensive sheep farm, but the Canterbury mixed farmer was really in a slightly worse financial position. All his apparent prosperity was due to currency inflation.

t ' Independence Lost “Farming today is big , business,” said Mr Holmes. “It has lost the independence of 50 years ago, and an interruption to our supplies of oil fuel would bring the industry to a? standstill. The dairy farmer north of Auckland is dependent on the shift engineer at Arapuni, the sheep farmer at Popotunoa is dependent on the bacteriologist at Wallaceville, and both are dependent on a coolie digging phosphate at Nauru.

“But much of our record prosperity is being frittered away in over spending on consumer goods while millions of acres produce less today than when the squatters occupied the open country 100 years ago. Within easy walking distance of this City of Nelson, there is good land growing gorse eight feet high, and the same is true around many centres of early settlement. “All that gorse to grub, but where can we find .the labour? Yet queues line up to watch shadows apparently moving on a screen. All that gorse to clear but how can we obtain the machinery? Yet every week-end from every city and town an almost continual stream of cars passes by. All that gorse to spray but how can we import the chemicals? We swallow £24.000,000 (retail) in social security prescriptions,” said Mr Holmes. ‘The drift to the towns is regarded by the orthodox economist as proof of the increasing efficiency of a mechanised agriculture, but in this country wjth our very limited resources -for efficient secondary industry, it may be a symptom of the distorJlol2 of our economy by inflation and of the changed psychological outlook of a proportion of the people,” he said.

‘‘Our fathers worked hard from force of necessity and also from force

of habit. Is there not a a generation growing up J acquiring the habit of wcnnKJ scientiously? Our fathers jao g little money but no lack <» We handle so much are in danger of being bliDty ll ®'’ materialism.” ?