New agricultural policy called for

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33541, 23 May 1974, Page 14

New agricultural policy called for

A call for action to reverse attitudes and policies resulting in depopulation of the country side and concentration of people in big cities was made by Mr H. A. Morton, senior lecturer in history at the University of Otago, in an address at Lincoln College last evening.

“We need deliberately to adopt policies which will provide a balanced development, stopping both rural depopulation and the creation of metropolises,” he said, in a pre-farmers’ conference address.

“Both in big cities and deserted countrysides, social intercourse and physical beauty deteriorate,” Mr Morton said. “Growth has been important I to all of us — quite as much •because experts could measure it, as because the man in the street really wanted it. But in Nature, growth is a companion of decay — and it is like that in societies, too.” 1 In New Zealand, the same generosity of spirit and openness of mind had to be ex- | tended to the agricultural sys[tem as had for several generations been displayed in education and social welfare. The great mistake everybody had been making was to think that these things were separate — that profit was for one field and concern for another. NEW DEFINITION

Mr Morton said that the present emphasis on production per man on the land (could result, and was resulting, in the depopulation of

irural New Zealand. There ’was a need to redefine efficiency. His proposal was that it was the least wasteful way of achieving what it was wanted to achieve.

Thereby, a farmer’s efficiency could be measured by how much he produced in his particular unit and not by the present simple-minded measurement of whether he went bankrupt or not. There was no economic reason, but only traditional and political attitudes, which prevented farmers from getting a proper share of the country’s income. The Government could alter overseas prices any time it chose by policies of devaluation and revaluation; and by giving guaranteed prices and tax adjustments to favour the production per acre on each type of soil, and within each climatic area, people could be retained on the land. “LAST FARMER”

This could be done, said Mr Morton. But he suspected it would not be done. Much of the fault would be with his farmer listeners, because many of them refused to see that attitudes must eventually adjust to reality. “Are you going to wait until there is only one farm in the North Island and one in the South Island before you start to think seriously?

— because that is the logical end of the economic-unit philosophy,” he said.

“And no doubt after that someone will invent a pipeline to take South Island grass to the North Island so that the last farmer, like the Ford Motor Company, can be located near the main market . . .”

Noting that the present agricultural policy was implicitly one of rural depopulation, with larger farms and fewer farmers, Mr Morton said that the remaining farmers would have less time to devote to fences, farm yards, and the gorse on the hillsides; and as a result, the appearance of the countryside, once and even yet the admiration of overseas visitors, was declining steadily. POLITICAL EFFECT The decline in rural population, said Mr Morton, also resulted in serious social problems in the provision of schools and professional services, and an important effect for the country a« a whole in the increasing political power of the huge urban areas.

“This is particularly dangerous, because when it comes to a choice between policies which will favour the physical and social environment and those which will maintain employment, I think I know which policies will prevail ... “Even today, there would be few members of Parliament in the major centres who would dare deliberately to vote to have an important industry sent somewhere else,” Mr Morton said.

“The damage to the physical and social environment which hhs happened in varying degrees, but without exception, in every large city overseas will happen here,” he said. “It will happen because the damage is caused by numbers and' not by intention. SOCIAL FACTORS “In our industrial and agricultural fields, we simply do not take social factors enough into account,” said Mr Morton. “There are many areas of our national life where we already put social factors first. All I suggest is that we apply more of this philosophy to more and more areas of our national life.”