Final Decision To Farmer

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 9

Final Decision To Farmer

Neither Mr P. S. Plummer, president of Federated Farmers of New Zealand, nor Mr C. Hilgendorf, deputy-chairman of the Meat Board, were prepared to give former Nuffield farming scholars attending a reunion conference at Palmerston North this week any clearcut advice as to the sort of farming they should go in for. Mr Plummer said that on the issue as to whether a farmer should go in for production of beef or lamb, the farmer hlnisejf had to make the final decision in the light of all the information that he could obtain and the conditions on his own property. Advice could be obtained from all sorts of people, he

said, but they were not all agreed. A problem was that what seemed expert advice could be proved completely wrong in the space of about two years. Mr Plummer said he did not believe in pushing slock carrying capacity to the last sheep because he believed that the point was reached where the law of diminishing returns set in. But it was for the farmer to make the final decision and he realised that it was a hard one to make. Mr Hilgendorf said that the Meat Board had no more information than was available to the intelligent farmer. It was not the board's function, he said, to advise a farmer on the form that his production should take.