Threat Seen To N.Z. Exports

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31906, 6 February 1969, Page 1

Threat Seen To N.Z. Exports

The development of larger and more economic farming units in Europe could nose increasingly-serious problems for New Zealand’s exports, said Dr L. J. Symons, senior lecturer in geography at the University of Canterbury, yesterday.

Dr Symons has returned after 16 months study leave as the holder of a Simon Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Manchester. “Agriculture in most of Europe remains relatively inefficient, and high protective tariffs and subsidies are necessary to allow farmers to continue to operate,” he said. “It is the extremely high level of these payments to; farmers from the rest of the community that will eventually force Governments to accept the need for drastic reform of the farming structure.

“It is then that New Zealand will face more competitive conditions in Europe,' whether or not Britain enters the Common Market.” Dr Symons said that during the 1970 s there could be a rapid transition in Europe to larger-scale and much more economic farming units, which could pose increasingly

serious problems for New Zealand’s exports.

“Technical advances require large units for their widespread implementation—and this is appreciated b> economists and politicians." he said.

“But the farming popula- ' tion is not yet ready to accept i voluntarily the structural readjustments that would be • necessary. Politicians are ac■cordingly unwilling to pro- , mote the rapid changes that fare economically -desirable, [because of the power of the i farming vote.” j This was true, Dr Symons ! said, not only of the E.E.C. countries, where proposals worked out by the European Economic Commission would halve the number of farms by, 1980, but also of more effiIcier.t farming countries such i as Great Britain and Denmark.