Community urged to back up farmers

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33964, 3 October 1975, Page 2

Community urged to back up farmers

(N Z. Press Association;

WELLINGTON, Oct. 2. Farmers would not [support permanently 'the Government’s hew meat price-smoothing scheme unless the Goviernment and the community fulfilled “their .side of the bargain,” said the chairman of the meat and wool section of Federated Farmers (Mr T. G. McNab).

He said today that the agreement between the Government and the Meat Board on the new price scheme meant some financial discipline for the fanner.

He now expects the Government and the rest of the community to fulfil their side of the bargain. Without this there would be no real benefit to the farmer, or the country. In [fact, the fanner would feel ] unable to give final support [ to permanent price-smoothing arrangements. The new scheme was the result of much study and discussion within the farming industry. The word “stabilisation” w’as anathema to many farmers, but the Meat Board’s

scheme was not stabilisation in the true sense of the word. It was a price-smoothing scheme which contained a measure of stability, and was designed, along with tfie schemes already agreed on for other commodities, to eliminate the major fluctuations in farmers’ incomes. This should allow farmers to assess with reasonable accuracy what income they could expect within a season.

The scheme did not ensure that farmers would always have a reasonable living, or a return on labour and capital: it did not ensure that they would be able to make

sufficient reinvestment in their property to increase production and earn the additional income the nation required. It was a. marketrelated scheme designed to average out over a period. “And nothing about it alters the blunt truth that the lower price received for pastoral products on world markets is not as significant to the farmer as are the rampant internal cost increases. The farmer has no way of recovering these. It would seem that with these he has been put in the position of some sort of national burdencarrier,” Mr McNab said.