Farm payment criticised

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32635, 17 June 1971, Page 3

Farm payment criticised

(New Zealand Preet Alternation)

WELLINGTON, June 16.

The pay-out of half the dairy industry’s trading surplus should not have been announced in the Budget, the dairy section of Federated Farmers was told today by Mr D. J. Harvey, of Taranaki.

The normal procedure was for the Minister of Agriculture to make such an announcement, he said. “The public has been hoodwinked into thinking farmers are getting a handout, and not their own trading surplus.”

The payment represented 1c per lb of butterfat, compared with 2}c in 1954-55, Mr Harvey said. The acting presidept of Federated Fanners (Mr J. J. Parsons) said that in rejecting the cost-adjustment scheme the Minister of Finance (Mr Muldoon) had commented that farmers valued their independence too much to live on across-the-board payments.

“But half the community lives this way, with their

wage agreements, industrial awards, and so on,” he said.

The conference resolved to pursue the cost adjustment scheme “with full vigour." In a written report the chairman (Mr T. Fitzsimons) said the concessions in the Budget only slightly eased the burdens on producers. Mr Fitzsimons was absent, and his report and address were read on his behalf.

The fanners’ problem of internal cost adjustment had little bearing on the outcome of the E.E.C- talks, Mr Fitzsimons said. The daily industry must not be written off as having no future.

With increased world population and an international trend away from dairy farming the world demand for dairy products would exceed, supply.