FARMING COSTS

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32637, 19 June 1971, Page 18

FARMING COSTS

Meeting told of increase

Within 12 hours of the Budget’s being announced, farmers north of the Waipara River were worse off than before, the chairman of the Meat and Wool Section of North Canterbury Federated Fanners (Mr B. H. Palmer) said yesterday. Speaking at a meeting of the section’s executive committee, he said that on the night the Budget was delivered a meeting of shearers north of the Waipara River decided to raise shearing and crutching charges. To a farmer with 5000 sheep this would cost another $2OO.

If the farmer put on 50 tons of fertiliser a year, the subsidies at $2.50 a ton and $1 a ton for spreading would total $175. Therefore he was $25 worse off than before the Budget. Mr Palmer said this illustration was not to justify, or otherwise, the shearers’ act, nor to critcise the increased subsidy, but to emphasise that rampant internal inflation must be controlled.

Mr Palmer said, on further inquiry, he had found that farmers should not pay shearers more than 7 per cent above the rate obtained at January 31. The shearers’ course was to apply to the Remuneration Authority.