Farm Targets May Be Hard To Reach

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32012, 12 June 1969, Page 7

Farm Targets May Be Hard To Reach

Without incentives for those who in- - creased production, it would be very difficult to reach the farming targets set by the National Development Conference, said Professor B. P. Philpott, Professor of Agricultural economics at Lincoln College.

Professor Philpott, speaking to farmers at Ruakura, said that the Agricultural Development Conference had considered the possibilities of production incentives but had found too many administrative difficulties to recommend their introduction. - “I have never been impressed by the argument that a policy should not be considered because it carried administrative difficulties,” he said “All new policies have that—especially in the tax field—and 1 should have thought that at the present time, of ail times, the agriculture committee (of the National Development Conference) could have gone back and reopened this issue and come up with firm recommendations on the type and nature of agricultural incentives required."

This was all the more important because there was a danger that it would be assumed that the great success achieved in meeting and exceeding the Agricultural Development Conference’s targets would be repeated with no trouble with the National Development Conference’s targets. This view, he said ignored the very favourable prices for agricultural products—especially what amounted to a mini wool boom in 1963-64 —and also the change in farmers’ mood compared with 1964. Enthusiasm for increased production had now been replaced by considerable disappointment and cynicism in the light of the fall in prices, mainly for wool and dairy products, and the erosion of incomes that had occurred. One was bound to point

out that the fall in prices was not a result of the increased production and could not be laid at the door of the Agricultural Development Conference and also that farmers who had increased production were better off under the present lower price situation than they would have been had they stayed put. “The fact remains, however, that the mood is now one of far greater cautiousness and wariness and I think that without incentives (which accrue only to those who increase production) it will be very difficult indeed to reach the targets set.”