Farm subsidy use queried

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32562, 23 March 1971, Page 3

Farm subsidy use queried

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, March 22. It was questionable whether further substantial expenditure on subsidies to farmers could be justified, said the Labour Party spokesman on agriculture, Mr C. J. Moyle M.P., to a Federated Farmers meeting at Whitianga tonight.

Farming was already receiving substantial subsidy assistance. This year, direct help amounted to s3lm and, if indirect expenditure was included, the figure would be almost sloom.

Although quite massive assistance was already being given, problems appeared no nearer solution. Careful consideration was necessary if more taxpayers’ money was to be used in this way. Mr Moyle said the sl2m paid last year in the suspensory loan “handout” scheme had added nothing to production or to the restructuring of fanning. He suggested that the money would have been better used in increasing the fertiliser subsidy, in market investigation, sales promotion, new product research, or in establishing young men on farms. Young men had no hope today, he said, of becoming farmers in their own right Yet New Zealand needed these men to achieve the changes in production which were so necessary to meet the challenges of the market place.

MARKET CHANGES “One of these challenges is the certainty of the loss or shrinkage of traditional markets,” said Mr Moyle. “We must make .every possible effort to reduce our dependence on Britain.

“We can only achieve this by full-scale market research, by massive sales promotion, by hard bilateral bargaining and by a readiness to meet the changing pattern of demand by changing patterns of production, processing and packaging.” Mr Moyle said that many ideas had yet to be tried. New Zealand should look at negotiating with Japan to accept whole milk powder in

return for cars—by cutting tariffs at both ends. New Zealand could enter into meaningful partnerships with leading United States food processors to market produce under their labels, in their markets, backed by their sales and distribution channels, and research into New Zealand products. The country could establish real links within Europe to process its scoured wool into the world’s finest carpets; it could use the stockpile that lay discolouring in the stores. CHEAP LOANS

The creation of a separate ' cost structure for fanners as distinct from other sections of the community was fraught with difficulties and anomalies.

Short-term justice could be better achieved by ensuring for farmers a fair and reasonable standard of living while stability was restored and the necessary re-orientation of production was undertaken. This could mean quite substantial low interest credit accommodation for the industry—if necessary of a suspensory nature. “But,” said Mr Moyle, “such assistance must be contingent upon the willingness of the industry to accept necessary restructuring, and adequate safeguards to prevent such assistance being capitalised into inflated land values for the benefit of the

speculator and to the detriment of the genuine farmer."