Reply To Company Farming Critics

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

Reply To Company Farming Critics

“There is still a hard core of farming opinion in New Zealand which is against an enterprise such as this for no other reason than it might disturb their way of life.” the former Director-General of Agriculture, Mr D. N. R. Webb, told a gathering of Nuffield farming scholars at Palmerston North this week. He was referring to his plans to launch a public company to take over a 14,000-acre block of country in the King Country.

"I quote from recent public writings of farmers—‘people with a capacity to think in depth may well be concerned at the intrusion of publiclyowned companies into land ownership in the country.’ “City people investing in farming an objectionable intrusion? Put a mighty big question mark after that one,” remarked Mr Webb. “More from the same writer: ‘Federated Farmers’ policy is opposition to all forms of monopoly ... It is that remuneration should be related to production. It will be noted that emphasis is on the reward for productivity, not on capital gain nor the stimulation of commercial greed neurosis’

“Is the lending of savings by 2000 or 3000 people grouped together in company formation for the purpose of farm development a monopoly? If it is, then why have farmers grouped together to form their trading organisa-tions—co-operative freezing works, co-operative fertiliser works and, of course, the Dairy Board? “Are all these farmer organisations to be placed in the dock of public opinion, because if you apply our friend’s yardstick they are activated by a commercial greed neurosis? “Another writer says, ‘These monopolies can only be established at the expense of freedom. Without individual freedom prosperity is impossible.’ Am I and my supporters to be denied freedom? In the opinion of some freedom should be one-sided •—for the benefit of one sec. tion of the community. Freedom is to be denied apparently to the men and women who want to make a different approach to farm production. “Yet the same people who want to keep a particular field of national production

to themselves, who want their own form of monopoly, turn rapidly to the city for help when market conditions are less buoyant We had one leader saying recently, when there was a proposal to reduce the wheat price, ‘When the farmer is in difficulty, the city worker must share his burden.’ The city worker, by logic, should not be denied the right to share the joys and risks of farming. "And recently on the subject of subsidies, another leader, supporting them for the farmer, advanced the opinion that they ought to be regarded as a redistribution of income. If city income is to be redistributed as grants to farmers, then city dwellers should be given the opportunity to show that, by the Investment of adequate capital and the application of the best managerial techniques, the need for farm subsidies may be lessened. “If we are to accept the premise that subsidies are nothing more than a redistribution of income, we are hardly on solid ground in contesting payments of subsidies to encourage production in France, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

The properties in the King Country that it is proposed the public company should farm had a quickly realisable potential—from two to four ewe equivalents, and in fact the Department of Agriculture said that five ewes were necessary for control of the present grass. Six ewes was a reasonable target and eight was not silly, he said. “The basic ingredients for success are capital for additional fencing (25 miles of it) and additional stock plus good management. The capital and physical requirements are quite beyond the capabilities of any one man.”