Not this time?

Press, 15 October 1976, Page 14

Not this time?

Last week there was a report on these pages that wheat growers had put to the Government that the present method of setting the price for wheat by the Government should be replaced by an independent price setting authority.

The chairman of the Dominion agriculture section of Federated Farmers, Mr A. L. Mulholland, said this week that he regarded it as unlikely that the new system would come into operation for the setting of the 1978 price, even if it gets early Government approval. Negotiations on the setting of that price were due to begin soon, he said.

An aspect of setting the price by an independent authority that farmers might not be aware of, he said, was that once it had been set that was the final word. The federation is also giving thought as to how, under such a pricing system, use may be made of material gathered by the farm management department and Agricultural Economics Research Unit at Lincoln College in the wheat survey that the federation has commissioned.

towards a board have come from farmers themselves. The main pressure has come from the Waikato and has been associated with the escalation of the growing of maize in the area and the fact that North Island-produced maize is an export commodity in contrast with the more traditional grain production, which has in the main been for internal consumption with occasional export to clear a surplus. The president of Waikato Federated Fanners, Mr W. R. Storey, said recently that meetings with more than 300 grain growers in his district had led to his province deciding to promote the establishment of a grain producers’ board. “In an industry where the grower is largely in the hands of commercial interests and where the consumer viewpoint outweighs the producers’ when price and production levels are discussed, it is obvious that if growers are to maintain a stable and adequate income some formal structure must be evolved to guide the destiny of the industry,” Mr Storey said. When the idea came forward Mr Mulholland said he had decided at the section’s annual conference that farmers should know what was being talked about and had asked that a