Manufacturers Help Farmers

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30916, 24 November 1965, Page 14

Manufacturers Help Farmers

Members of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation were “acting like statesmen” when they said at their annual conference that the federation should help farmers to get disincentives removed, said a former president of the federation (Mr R. H. Stewart) in a report on the conference to the monthly meeting of the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association.

“I fully applaud it —incentives to the farming community are vital to industry,” said Mr Stewart. “If we are going to expand as manufacturers, we need overseas earnings to do it.” Mr Stewart said he thought that the present dependence on inflation to improve farmers’ capital was a wrong attitude. Lately, he said, he had become interested in a farm —his son’s. From an investment point of view, he said, farming was a “dead loss.” “I can’t understand why farmers carry on as farmers, except that it’s a way of life,” he said. A man had to work 80 hours a week on a farm of 250 acres to get a wage of £25 a week, said Mr Stewart. “I assume none of us would work as hard—all hours, all weathers,” he said. Capital Return The capital return on investment, he said, was about 3 per cent. Farmers, he said, were most concerned with death duties, which affected them more

than it did people in manufacturing. “Coupled with a lack of labour, there is the question of the small return. The farmer cannot afford to pay for an extra man or two to improve his farm. It is a very difficult situation.”

Mr Stewart said he thought the manufacturers’ federation should urge the Government to do something about this. The association’s president (Mr C. W. Mace) said that the federation had been right behind the farmers all the time in trying to help the situation. The federation should try to help the Government support the farmers on this vital subject. Mr J. K. Dobson, who was referred to at the meeting as having an interest in farming, said that he thought that one of the incentives to farming should be the abolition of death duties. The incentive, he said, would be so great that the Government would not lose anything, because of increased taxation from increased production.