France As Power In Agriculture

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 1

France As Power In Agriculture

The tremendous agricultural growth of France was a factor not generally appreciated in casual conversations about the European Economic Community and related matters, said Dr. C. P. Kindleberger, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Christchurch yesterday.

"In- the 1920 s France had agriculture of the 1820 s, and even then it took a long time to pick up; but recently French agriculture has begun to boom, and there will be surpluses. These could be critical in discussions in which New Zealand is interested,” he said. One of the strange things about this was that France had improved her agriculture, basically, by taking people out of it. Professor Kindleberger said that after the war there was a great drift of labour to the cities. Farm labour was scarce. The Government reorganised land holdings, machinery appeared, people returning from Algeria and similar places brought new techniques, and production soared. Professor Kindleberger, a keen advocate of freer trade, said he was interested in monetary reform and what happened in international borrowing. He thought American restraints on capital exports were short-sighted. It was better to help general liquidity and develop its standing than to destroy it by shortterm plans. ‘I would like to see the international capital market made freely available,” he said. New Zealand problems in borrowing in London and New York and on the Eurodollar market must give the impression that the world was an unfriendly place. Professor Kindleberger said he hoped butter would not follow sugar, which had been described as the worstorganised commodity in the world. In practice sugar was produced for home consumption and a few friends. There was no raal world market or real woftd price. Butter

could get into the same position, as France and other new producers sought export markets.

Professor Kindleberger will be visiting Erskine fellow in the economics department of the University of Canterbury for a month, giving lectures, seminars, and one public lecture on July 5.