‘Farmers will need more unless unions behave’

Press, 24 June 1978, Page 24

‘Farmers will need more unless unions behave’

Unless unions begin to show common sense, the taxpayer can look forward with confidence to further calls on him to he? farming, according to a North Canterbury Federated Farmers official. The grants made this year would be “peanuts” compared with what would be needed in the future, said Mr K. M. Wells, chairman of the agriculture section. Addressing a meeting of his section. Mr Wells said that industrial unrest affecting the farming industry was the greatest cost faced by the industry today. The recent drought was small in comparison. Mr Weils said that both major political parties had agreed that expansion in agriculture was the foremost means of increasing overseas earnings. But he was grieved by the attitude of some city dwellers to the subsidies granted to farmers in the Budget. They failed to realise, or did not want to realise, that there were many farmers at various stages of development with differing needs for assistance. The 50c a head grant was little compensation — two weeks feed — for the man who had been hard

hit by the drought, had had to hold extra stock for five months awaiting slaughter, had suffered losses and received lower returns because the stock were lighter and the rejection rate was higher, and was now faced with buying supplementary feed at more than S 3 a head for a 12-week winter. People also covenientlv forgot that if the cash grants to farmers were not warranted, as they so glibly suggested, the money would all be taxed in next year’s income. “Freeze farmers’ incomes” was the song a few years ago, he said. Now the chickens had come home to roost and there were virtually no incomes to freeze. Mr Wells was unhappy with the treatment that grain growers had received in the Budget. He said he was amazed at the inability of both major political parties to acknowledge the plac of the grain grower in the New’ Zealand farming system. While ever ready to freeze the price of grain when it suited, politicians, economists. and farm advisers seemed to be unaware of the grain-growing industry. “ ‘Stack the stock on’ seems to be their motto. . .”

While the Budget contained some relief for the stock farmer (although this could be descnoed as too little and too late), there was all but total disregard for the grain growers) and when it was taken into account that prices for feed grain had been frozen to assist other sectors of the farming industry, it was little wonder that some were envious. “A little put and take of fertiliser was about all there was in the Budget for us,” said Mr Wells. “Seed-certification fees are to be a cost to the Government, but, like meantinspection frees, it is a very debatable point if they should ever have been a cost to the farmer.” Mr Wells said it would have been wiser if the Budget had contained some measures to alleviate the need for future drought relief by ensuring that adequate feed reserves were held on farms. Unless consideration was given to building up these vital feed reserves next season, farmers could easily be back where they had been recently, and the country’s important grain-export potential would again be in jeopardy.