Farmers seek assurances

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34130, 17 April 1976, Page 2

Farmers seek assurances

Federated Farmers will not approve any scheme for smoothing market prices for meat and wool unless the Government gives certain “vital assurances.”

It wants the Government to establish formal machinery for an annual review of agriculture; to promise compensatory measures, through such review, to ensure investment in agriculture when the industry is not achieving economic balance; and to say how it proposes to impose continuing restraints on all sectors of the economy.

The federation says it has asked the. Government for these promises urgently so that it can assure its members that any benefit to the economy from stabilising fanners’ incomes will not be negated by inflationary and other internal economic influences.

Federated Fanners’ president (Mr J. T. Kneebone) said that the requests reaffirmed points included in a farming incomes policy which the federation formulated last year; but it seemed to the federation’s executive that the Government was willing to implement pricesmoothing without any of the

"balancing assurances” the federation had sought. The executive had told the Minister of Agriculture (Mr Maclntyre) that it had decided the highest priority should be placed on the Government’s establishment of formal machinery for an annual review of the farming industry.