Wheat imports foreseen

Press, 22 December 1978, Page 3

Wheat imports foreseen

The Government's recent price increases to wheatgrowers could only lead to more wheat imports at a time of serious baiance-of-payments problems said the Labour Party’s spokesman on farming matters, Mr B. G. Barclay, this week. Commenting on the basic price of $137 a tonne announced by the Minister of Trade and Industry (Mr Adams-Schneider) for wheat harvested in 1980, Mr Barclay said he was dis= appointed that once again the National Government, in spite of the appointment of a new Under-Secretary for Agriculture from Canterbury

(Mr R. L. G. Talbot), had failed to recognise the increased costs that the grower had to meet.

Last year, when costs had increased 25 per cent, the Government had increased the price for wheat, now about to be harvested, 6 per cent. This year, when costs had risen about IS to 20 per cent, and substantial increases in oil prices were in prospect, the Government had approved a meagre 7.5 per cent price rise, Mr Barclay said. As he had predicted last year, when the 1979 price was announced, the Government’s failure to recognise the farmer’s increased costs

was likely to lead to the importation of wheat next year and after the latest price increase there would be a rise in imports in 1980. The National Party’s election manifesto in 1975 had said that it would implement a policy aimed at making New Zealand self-sufficient in wheat to obviate the need to spend overseas funds importing big quantities of grain. “The credibility of the Under-Secretary for Agriculture must be called into question when we see this parsimonious attitude to the

hard-working wheatgrower,” said Mr Barclay.