Farmers Worried About Feed Grain Imports

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32274, 17 April 1970, Page 9

Farmers Worried About Feed Grain Imports

Imported feed grains might lower prices next year for locally grown feed grains, the executive committee of the agriculture section of North Canterbury Federated Farmers was told this week. The committee decided to ask the Dominion section of the council to obtain an assurance that any carry-over of surplus stocks to next year would not be allowed to affect the prices paid to farmers for next season’s feed grains. The committee also expressed concern that the Government had allowed the importation of feed grains without a nation wide survey of available stocks of local grains.

“There should have been a much more positive attempt to make a full assessment of local stocks,” the chairman of the committee (Mr A. L Mulholland) said. “It- was announced that up to a million bushels of feed grains could be required to meet a shortage and that this quantity would have to be imported. It is, this point We are challenging. This figure can’t be known because there are still large areas of grain in Central Otago, for instance, that have not yet been harvested,” he said. “Also the use in the South Island of feed grains will probably not be as great as expected thanks to the easing of the drought' and the availability of new growth, so the surplus to be carried into next year will be even greater,” he: said.

Mr Mulholland said that newspaper reports had slid that a shipment of 5000 tons

I of barley was already on its : way from Canada for stock > feed. /