CORPORATION TO RUN FARMS?

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31382, 30 May 1967, Page 3

CORPORATION TO RUN FARMS?

(New Zealand Preet Attociation)

TTMARU, May 29.

The ability of a farm labourer to earn sufficient to establish himself on a farm was questioned by the Director-General of Agriculture (Mr D. N. R. Webb) today.

“I think part of the answer will have to lie in public flotation of farming companies but this need not mean that the individual unit will

disappear,” he said at a combined Rotary and Federated Farmers’ luncheon.

“It will still always be part of the scene, but for the larger operations’ the public corporation, which is the whole basis of successful industry, would appear to be the key,” he said. In America the family unit was losing much of its importance and in Britain the computer had been introduced to farm management “We in New Zealand are not being left behind, and there are research projects under way at Massey and Lincoln on the possible use of the computer for budgeting. For instance, at Massey the main themes of the study are: (a) To write a range of computer programmes capable of analysing a typical farm budget situation and (b) to gain experience in the design of clerical procedures for handling the large amount of data which would need to be processed by a North Island farm data processing centre," Mr Webb said.