Guaranteed wool prices ‘supported’ by farmers

Press, 16 August 1978, Page 3

Guaranteed wool prices ‘supported’ by farmers

Members of the Wool Board’s electoral committee gave a colleague little support yesterday when he proposed that the Government be told that they did not want the guaranteed minimum wool prices announced in the Budget. Under the Government’s proposals, growers are guaranteed prices in the coming two season, based on an average of 205 c per kilogram. A new member of the committee, Mr J. F. Galloway (South Otago), said he hoped the scheme would continue. Farming was a biological industry and could not withstand stop-go policies.

Mr H. B. Styles (South Canterbury), who made the proposal opposing the scheme, said he would be failing in his duty if he did not look beyond its immediat benefits.

He knew that the Wool Board and the Meat Board were concerned. The Wool Board’s chairman (Mr J. Clark) had spoken about the growing involvement of the Government in regulating annual returns to farmers. He saw in the scheme an erosion of producer control of their industry, Mr Styles said. If prices were set unrealistically high levels there would be no possibility of a scheme’s being self-balanc-ing.

Mr Styles said that he did not know of a farming group that wanted this sort of intervention, but Mr H.A.S. Lloyd (North and Central Auckland) said that all the comment he had received from farmers about the Government’s scheme was favourable.

In the present cost-plus economy the all-important message was not being re-

fleeted back from the market place to the farmer, Mr Styles said. An example of this was that while lamb prices were at record levels in Britain, the message that was reaching the farmer, because of the costs he was facing was to diminish production. Until the economy was more in balance there would have to be some form of compensatory transfers to the farming industry, he said.

The deputy-chairman, Mr M. R. Barnett (CanterburyWestland), said it would be somewhat ludicrous to tell the Government that they did not want a scheme that was now in effect. Many young farmers had said that this was the first time they had a base on which to make a budget. The Government had been made well aware of the need to bring about confidence in the industry.

The committee decided to seek the opinion of growers on the Government’s minimum price scheme after it had been working for a year, and to urge that the Wool Board’s price-smooth-ing scheme be continued. The chairman of the Dominion meat and wool section of Federated Farmers (Mr J. B. Falconer) who is a member of the committee, said that it would be too early to tell the Government that growers did not want their scheme. But Mr Styles was supported by Mr D. E. Thurston (Rangitikei), who said that his proposal expressed the concern of many farmers over the involvement of the Government.