UNFORTUNATE DECISION

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30947, 31 December 1965, Page 9

UNFORTUNATE DECISION

Lower prices earlier in the year again directed attention to marketing wool. Talks held in South Africa a few months , ago seemed to offer promise of New Zealand, Australia and South Africa acting together in setting floor prices for wool, but the rejection by Aus-

tralian woolgrowers of proposals for a conservative floor price scheme seem to have dashed hopes of such joint action. Today the New Zealand Wool Commission is operating a floor price scheme at little cost to anyone. Buyers know when floor levels have been reached, they realise that wool will not be obtained for a lesser figure and they have been paying this price or better so that relatively little wool has had to be taken over by the commission. Thus at one end of the scale an element of fluctuation has been taken out of wool prices, and there is little doubt that wide fluctuations in price are the greatest enemy of wool and wool growers. The Australians could have made an important contribution to market stability by their participation in this sort of a scheme, but in the meantime this is not to be and woolgrowers and wool consumers will be the worse off for this decision. Potatoes It seemed that important progress had been made in securing sanction this year for the importation into Australia of New Zealand potatoes for both table as well as processing purposes. While some 11,000 tons of New Zealand potatoes went across the Tasman to help ease a shortage there and incidentally relieve a local surplus here, unexpected problems again arose. Some of these appear to have been associated with the distribution of the potatoes at the Australian end, which was beyond New Zealand control, but it does appear that the Potato Board, New Zealand merchants and growers have got to look at methods of packaging if further trade in potatoes is to be done with Australia. This seems to be necessary to ensure that the product reaches its destination in the best possible condition. Some form of crating of potatoes has been suggested. In every field of merchandising packaging is playing an increasingly important role these days and for long distance transport involving shipping and handling at ports something better than the sack is now probably necessary.

A recent report indicates that last season’s potato crop is likely to have produced a surplus of some 10,000 tons on which the Potato Board will be paying out the guaranteed price. On the face of

it this surplus would have been double this figure but for the Australian trade.

This year has seen the opening of the New Zealand Agricultural Engineering Institute at Lincoln College—the institute is financed by the Government through the Department of Agriculture. One of the major problems that the institute is giving attention to in the early stages is tractor safety cabs. Legislation which came before Parliament this year provides for makes of cabs or safety frames to conform to certain requirements before being fitted to tractors. This seems a commonsense provision before drivers entrust their safety to them. It would seem to be a natural prerequisite of any enforcement of the fitting of cabs on a national scale.

During the year Dr. S. N. Adams arrived from Tasmania to become director of the other institute at Lincoln, the Tussock Grasslands and Mountain Lands Institute. And in the coming year the Wool Research Organisation will occupy its new laboratories still under construction near the college. It is now a little more than a year since the Agricultural Development Conference finished its work and its permanent successor, the Agricultural Production Council, has been keeping the progress of farming under review in the past year. An important development this year was the introduction of a subsidy on the transport of fertiliser calculated to stimulate use of fertiliser in areas most distant from works. It was unfortunate that soon after the announcement of the subsidy the price of fertiliser was raised, but due to the general buoyancy of the fanning industry fertiliser usage has been running at a high level and this in itself augurs well for farm production, as there is a strong relationship between fertiliser usage and production.

Many farmers still feel that production is being hampered by the level at which the maximum rates of taxation are reached in New Zealand.

Lately it has been revealed that a working party of the Agricultural Production Council has brought forward an incentive scheme for livestock increases based on nil standard values. Such a scheme, it is felt, might be a potent factor in stimulating stock increases in the interests of reaching the production targets set for the early years of the next decade.