Subsidy commended

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33577, 4 July 1974, Page 14

Subsidy commended

The subsidy on fertiliser was described by the South Island executive director of the Sheep and Cattlemen’s Association (Mr S. A. Taylor) yesterday as the Government’s “first faltering steps toward realism.” “It would be difficult to make a more positive statement on the future of farming than that of Mr T. G. McNab, Dominion chairman of the meat and wool section Federated Farmers, at Rotorua this week,” said Mr Taylor. “This is the serious situation that the Sheep and Cattlemen’s Association has anticipated over the last two years — and we welcome Mr

McNab’s more outspoken statement. “Even now, the point is not clearly put that once meat and wool become uneconomic to produce, then production will not decline — it will tumble. “It was this point that a

deputation from the Sheep and Cattlemen’s Association tried to impress on the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Moyle) last week. The Government must show the general public just what is in store for everyone if production falls further.”

Describing the fertiliser subsidy as “the first faltering steps toward realism,” Mr Taylor said that every farmer would still have to find $225 extra this year for superphosphate. Emphasising that costs must be contained, Mr Taylor offered four suggestions towards this end — a slow-ing-down and rationalisation of meat hygiene requirements, a containment of Government spending, the suspension of superannuation demands in “the present crisis,” and an attack on the problem of relating wages and salaries to overseas earnings, not to some “fictitious average” farm income,

Mr Taylor said: "There could well be an attempt by farmers to share in our inflated currency by diversifying too hastily into locally consumed crops if the cost of processing meat renders it uneconomic. This would be disastrous for town and country.

“We need every overseas dollar we can win," he said. “There is nd other way to avoid national disaster.”