Farmer must decide

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32879, 30 March 1972, Page 8

Farmer must decide

He believed that it was dangerous to appear to try to direct the industry what to do precisely, Mr F. L. Ward, director of the Economic Service of the Meat and Wool Boards, told a seminar on the sheep retention scheme at Lincoln College last week-end. Mr Ward, who reviewed events leading to the formulation and implementation of the scheme, considered that it was preferable to plan means of production but leave it to the farmer in the farm situation to decide the actual form production should take. There must be investigations of future prospects for products, but it was difficult to make these assessments at farm level. If it was, for instance, said that beef was the right thing to produce, then many people who were not favourably placed to do this might go in for it and get their fingers burnt, and then they would come back to those who had advised them in this way making claims for protection. He recalled that at a time when he had been urging that high country farmers should go into more dry sheep a man who had called on him asking him to help plan the change over had finally left him after being urged, in his particular situation, to expand his ewe numbers. Recalling that when methods of assisting the sheep industry were under consideration subsidies on such things as wool and lamb and on various inputs like fertiliser, transport, drenches, weed and pest control and the extension of

the supplementary finance scheme had been considered by the economics working party of the Agricultural Production Council, of which he was a member, Mr Ward said that consideration of al! these indicated that there was a need for a scheme which was not tied precisely to any one form of production and which left the farmer reasonably free to make his own use of any assistance that might be granted. On the sheep retention incentive scheme, he said that the advantages of it, in general, were that it would indicate Government confidence in the sheep industry. It was administratively practicable and cost assessments were possible from available statistics. As a short-term measure it was flexible and could be ad. justed. It was also sufficiently general to give far mers flexibility in the use of the grant for their specific requirements. The disadvantages included the possibility that the scheme could be open to abuse, although this could be checked. There was also the suggestion that stock would be held until June 30 and then slaughtered and also that the scheme would have no selectivity. “It was, however, agreed by the working party that it should be an across the board job,” he added. Mr Ward also quietly chided some questioners who suggested that unhappy situations like that recently encountered by the sheep industry should be foreseen and planned for, saying that care had to be taken in predicting dire effects as by this very action they could be helped to really happen. But he admitted that it was certainly desirable and necessary to keep informed about what was happening.