Threat of protest over wheat price

Press, 11 August 1979, Page 3

Threat of protest over wheat price

Some cropping farmers are in a mood to take extreme protest action to show their displeasure about the Government’s continued refusal to increase the price for wheat that will be harvested next year. ■ Dumping wheat on the main street of Timaru and holding back wheat on farms have been among suggested actions. A little over a year ago Southland farmers released old ewes in the main street of Invercargill and subsequently slaughtered them near the centre of the city as a protest about delays in getting stock killed at freezing works as a result of industrial action. The chairman of the Dominion agriculture section of Federated Farmers (Mr N. Q. Wright) said yesterday that feeling was running high among arable farmers in many parts of New Zealand about the state of their industry. While they had not yet made clear what they intended to do, such farmers, particularly those who had not yet decided whether to sow grain this season, were definitely in the mood to take action to express their dissatisfaction with the Government’s refusal to increase the price of wheat, Mr Wright said. Mr Wright would not be

drawn on what action might be contemplated by angry farmers; but at a meeting in Timaru last month under the auspices of the agriculture section of South Canterbury Federated Farmers, it was decided that if negotiations with the Government did not result in setting a price to cover production costs, the section should act to ensure that all milling wheat from the next harvest was held on farms until a satisfactory price was paid. At the same meeting, one speaker suggested that wheat should be dumped in Stafford Street, the main street of Timaru, to show farmers’ anger about the attitude of politicians to the wheat industry.

The provincial president of South Canterbury Federated Farmers (Mr I. H. Hayman) said last evening he believed that growers had good justification for a price increase, but he was definitely against any “way out” action in support of their case.

Some of the actions that had been contemplated were “crazy”. For growers with a bank overdraft — and there were some of them in South Canterbury —■ Mr Hayman said that the idea of holding wheat back in silos on farms was an “economic impossibility” and was not likely to

gain enough support /to carry any ..weight. Irf any case it was an idea that lie deplored. “We do not have to grow wheat. Growers have known what the price was and also that costs* would escalate. It is a personal decision/’ Mr Hayman said. . Bakers had been given two increases in the price of bread in the last few months but the Government was not prepared to compensate growers ' for the effects of inflation, devaluation, and the reduction of the fertiliser subsidy. Many people did not realise that often growers were not paid for wheat until about a year after. they had sown it; and when the rate of inflation and the prospect of fuel price increases were taken into account it would be seen that the setting of the price so far in advance — the price for wheat harvested next year was set last December — worked to the disadvantage of the grower.

Mr Wright said that while the increased level of supplementary minimum prices for meat and wool and other measures announced in the Budget had given other sectors of the industry confidence to plan for the future, there had been little in the Budget for the arable farmer.