Farmer aid ‘stop-gap’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33753, 28 January 1975, Page 2

Farmer aid ‘stop-gap’

The financial position of the meat and wool farmer was so precarious that any assistance from the Government was most welcome and appreciated, said the ehairman of the meat and wool section executive of Federated Farmers Canterbury branch (Mr M. R. Barnett) at a special meeting yesterday. But, Mr Barnett said, he feared that it would not be sufficient to get production really moving again. “This is a stop-gap measure and not the answer to

I the total long-term problem, as the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Moyle) agrees. | “It is a sorry state of affairs when with lamb selling at good values overseas, it cost almost one and a half times more to process and transport our lamb than the producer actually received for it himself," Mr Barnett said. If the farmer was to receive any real benefit from i the Government’s moves, costs must be contained, but already an increase in killing charges had swallowed s2om. Seven dollars for lamb and 93 cents a kilogram for wool was still not an economic price to the farmer, Mr Barnett said. The store sheep farmer who sold few fat lambs but on whom the whole future of ewe num-

bers centred, did not gain very much. “I would hate to see ewe lambs being slaughtered rather than kept as ewe replacements," he said. “I doubt if sufficient money will be available to be passed on to the essential servicing industries so that they can further expand to cope with farming needs when the economic tide turns.” The meat and wool industry was the base of New Zealand’s economy, and costs wtihin it and affecting it must be controlled so that efficient farming would have real incentive to further develop and increase production. This way the resulting extra finance would filter through the servicing industries and the whole community, said Mr Barnett.