Farmers Call For Fertiliser Subsidy

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31125, 30 July 1966, Page 20

Farmers Call For Fertiliser Subsidy

(Ntw Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, July 29.

The annual conference of Federated Farmers adopted an Auckland remit urging that “in the national interest” the fertiliser industry or the farmer should be subsidised.

The remit referred to the recent rise in the price of fertiliser due to increased costs of raw materials and said this was likely to continue. The subsidy would keep down on-the-farm costs. Mr D. D. Alderton, of Otago, suggested the “very best and soundest answer” to the problem was that the farming industry should examine its use of fertilisers critically. “I am quite convinced from discussions with people who know the effect of fertiliser on the soil that if we were more scientific in our ap-

proach to the use of fertilisers we could probably make as big a saving as the increased costs that have accrued to the industry recently,” he said. He moved an amendment that the next Dominion conference should be given a report on the effect of the full range of subsidies on the New Zealand economy, but withdrew the amendment after it had been suggested it would be more suitable as a separate motion for a later discussion. “Came As Surprise” Mr A. J. Smales, who moved the remit, said the rapid rate of increase in the price of fertiliser had occasioned surprise to many people associated with the Agricultural Production Council’s drive for increased production. The hardest-hit were the younger, less financiallysecure farmers—the ones who were just starting to make their way. Mr J. A. Ingram, of Waikato, claimed that for every farm that had plenty of fertiliser there were 99 in the country which required it and could not afford it. “These are the farmers this conference should be trying to help,” he said. Mr M. G. Hewitt, of Waikato, moved an amendment—later defeated —that the Dominion council should give urgent consideration to all aspects of the cost of fertiliser with particular reference to better utilisation and the present subsidy system.