U.K. Farming Misunderstood

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31304, 25 February 1967, Page 8

U.K. Farming Misunderstood

The production of the British farmer was being restricted to enable produce to be imported from New Zealand and other countries, Mr A. A. Copland, a New Zealander who has been associated with farming in Britain for the last 25 years, said in an interview in Timaru this week. He is on his first visit to his home country since leaving in 1942. Mr Copland was seeking to remove some commonly-held misunderstandings In New Zealand about British farming. British agriculture was an efficient Industry, he said. There were some of the best farmers in the world in England. In many respects, he said. New Zealand farmers had about the simplest system in the world. This was of course not to say that New Zealand farmers were not first class farmers. But the situation in England was quite different They had to consider conserving feed for up to about six months. They had to turn nature upside down to produce milk through the winter. Nobody wanted to make any mistake about the efficiency or ability of the British farmer. The value of British agricultural output was running at about £lBsom a year and this was greater than the combined value of the production from Australian and New Zealand agriculture “with a big hole left after that.”

New Zealand had free entry for her produce into the British market, except in recent years for butter. But whereas four years ago the British dairy farmer had 23 per cent of the home market for manufactured dairy produce his share today was 18 per cent. There was also a quota on him for pigs. He was only allowed to supply 36 per cent of his own. bacon market. The British dairy farmer had a rope around his neck curtailing his production in favour of New Zealand and other foreign countries. The forebearance of the British farmer In this situation was immense. He

wondered what New Zealand farmers would say in the same situa-

tion. Britain was currently caught in a very difficult economic squeeze and bad a tremendous problem with her balance of payments. In this situation the latest informed surveys of the Government and of the National Farmers’ Union agreed that given incentives British agriculture could increase its output by about £2som and so help the balance-of-payments problem, but this might mean taking less from New Zealand. “In my view the British farmer should have the first right to his market, and after that the New Zealand farmer and then the foreigner at the tail end, but of course we cannot have that situation as we have got to buy and sell,” said Mr Copland. There was what Mr Copland called "a monumental misunderstanding” in N.Z. of the agricultural subsidy and price support system operating in Britain. He had been asked to comment on the proposition that if subsidies and price guarantees were abolished in Britain New Zealand might sweep the British farmer off his own market. “That is nonsense—that completely misunderstands the system in the United Kingdom,” he said. Only a minor part of the £3som paid a year was In direct subsidies to the farmer—the rest of it was in consumer subsidies. The system worked as simply as this. The price that lambs, butter or cheese brought in London was determined by the law of supply and demand. It was the only free market in the world and into it came meat and dairy produce from all over the world and a considerable quantity from countries whose cost of production was much higher than the price that would be received and who were therefore virtually dumping it ' This had allowed the British housewife to buy on a cheap market and was the basis of Britain being able to compete industrially. Now at these levels these prices would be ruinous to the British farmer. He felt certain that any fair minded farmer in New Zealand would agree that there was virtually no winter to deal with compared vpth that in England

and they did not have to farm in a country with 52m or 53m people which was only about the size of New Zealand.

Consequently there was the annual review of farming prices made in February each year when the aim was to fix prices that would give the farmer a reasonable return for efficient production and a reasonable profit margin. But in the last few years the Government had asked the farmer for too much out of growth of production and this had reduced the profitability of British farming to an almost crisis level. But whereas New Zealand butter could be bought in England at about 3s 9d to 4s per lb and a New Zealand roast of lamb for about 4s 6d per lb, across the channel in France where agriculture was protected by tariff barriers and targets or quotas butter and lamb would be twice as costly. It was the low cost system operating in Britain that enabled New Zealand to compete on the British market, whereas if a tariff system operated the British farmer would be better off and the New Zealand farmer worse off. In the last 10 years 50,000 farmers had gone out of milk production in Britain because of lack of profitability and in the last year the country was 1 million pigs short as compared with 1965 because of the quota restrictions on the farmer and the market being forced down so that many people had not been able to stick at it any longer. . Mr Copland said that British farming had now reached a crisis and unless the Goveminent agreed to better returns for farmers at the current price review there would be a serious decline in output. , , , Because of the low level of profitability he said that In the time he had been in Bntain those engaged in agriculture had dropped from 1 million to below 500,000, and this had now reached an alarming point. "Never have I seen a

country so happy and pro-

perous right through as

New Zealand and I think that you should say a prayer for the British housewife every morning, for she is the person who has enabled you to he in this situation,” he said.

Next Wool Sale The next Christchurch wool sale will be a two-day sale on March 20 and 22, when the allocation for the two days is 42,000 bales. The secretary of the Christchurch Woolbrokers’ Association, Mr M. C. Tipping, said this week that wool was not coming in for the sale as quickly as expected and catalogues were still open for the sale.