FARMER B ... ‘Foresee return to the horse-and-buggy’

Press, 29 March 1979, Page 19

FARMER B ... ‘Foresee return to the horse-and-buggy’

Farmer B has 300 acres in three blocks, separated by a river and by three miles of road. It is all flat land, much of it is good cropping soil, and nearly all o'f it is irrigated, so that he can grow a wide variety of crops. But in practice he sticks to wheat and barley, and turnips for winter feed. His irrigation system gives his crops a boost, and also guarantees him a good supply o'f hay for winter feed, so he can carry five ewes to the acre without difficulty. He also has a small stud sheep flock. His output is high, but at the expense of a correspondingly high energy input. Last year, he used 4000 litres of petrol, and 4500 of diesel to drive the machinery on which his one-man business depends. He has three tractors, a header, a truck, a ute, and of course a car, plus the big diesel engine that drives his irrigation unit. Only the ute is less than five years old. The big tractor that he uses for ploughing and other heavy work scoffs *wp gallons of diesel an hour, and his header uses tnree — which is not too bad, because some headers are driven by petrol and burn as much as five gallons an hour. His irrigation motor burns only one gallon of diesel an hour, but it is his biggest expense; during the dry time in summer it is running for 18

hours a day. At present, this is economic, because it is reflected in his income from his crops. Whereas, he says, a large amount of barley in North Canterbury was rejected by maltsters this year because of screenings (grains that had not filled out properly) his barley passed all tests, and has been sold already.

Irrigation made the difference between having 50 tonnes of top-grade barley for sale, and having perhaps two-thirds that amount of inferior quality. All the same, he is looking very hard at his farming pattern for the next year.

He can very readily visualise a situation in which he will put away his irrigation unit, lock up his machinery' in the shed, and just grow grass. “If costs go on rising as they are rising at present, and I am sure they will, I am convinced that agricultural output will be drastically curtailed,” he says.

“I can almost foresee a return to the horse-and-buggy days. “The energy input into New Zealand farms in the last few years has been tremendous. Look at the machinery on this place — I could never afford to replace it, and from that point of view my business is grossly overcapitalised. There is far more machinery in those sheds than a place o’f this size should warrant. And the same

could be said of most farms. "But the machinery is necessary if output is to be maintained.

“The whole of our agriculture for the last 30 years has been based on the assumption that energy is cheap — or at least, cheaper than labour. So we have a large number of one-man farms that could really support two. “My neighbour, for example, plans to lamb 1500 sheep this year, on his own. He really needs a man to help him, but he says he cannot afford to employ anyone; to pay the wages he would have to run another 600 or 700 sheep.

“I don’t think we can continue to accept a situation like this. “I think a lot of farmers are thinking along these lines. I can see a very strong possibility of a big drop in farm output because farmers are trying to cut their costs.

“I would be very happy to return to the horse and buggy, and the more leisurely way of life that goes with it. “It might take me half a day tc get around my sheep, instead of an hour and a half, and I might have to reduce my stocking from five to the acre to two and a half. But I would be just as well off, because my costs would be lower.

“I would give up cropping altogether, and just let grass grow.

“Yes, I can foresee a big decrease in cropping of all kinds. There is a point, and 1 think that if we are not there already we are close to it, at which it simply becomes uneconomic to get out an irrigation unit to pump water on a crop, to drive round a paddock for hours on a tractor, burning up diesel, or to get the header out of the shed. “Even if you do have a crop, there is no guarantee you can sell it when you need to. My wheat was harvested a month ago, and it is still sitting in a silo in the paddock There is no indication yet of when the mills will be willing to buy it. “This is the only country I know of where the farmer is expected to store his own wheat. The Australians would not put up with a situation like this. Their Government owns all the silos, and the silos are at the railheads The wheat goes straight there from the header. “I have to put up a silo, I have to pay the cost of storing my wheat, I have to keep vermin out of it. AH this comes out of my income — which I don’t get anyway until I sell the wheat. “How can you plan ahead to run your business — a farm is a business — let alone cope with a fuel crisis, when you are faced with that sort of uncertainty at the end of it all?”