‘Farming in spot’

Press, 27 March 1981, Page 13

‘Farming in spot’

A Central Canterbury farm manager is concerned at the position that the farming industry finds itself in as a result of other sectors of the community working on a cost-plus system that is unceasingly 'eroding the returns that farmers receive from markets mainly overseas.

It is this predicament which has resulted in the Government recently announcing much higher supplementary minimum prices for meat in the next export killing season and allocation of extra funds to the Rural Bank to enable farmers to continue such essential operations on their farms as topdressing,. The man who feels that there needs to be some explanation of the impasse that farmers are faced with is Mr B. G. (Barry) Simmons, who has worked on farms for about 30 years as a musterer, a member of a married couple team and latterly as a farm manager. For about the last 16 years he has been manager of Blackhills, Hororata.

While he is a delegate from the Hororata branch of Federated Farmers to the executive of the meat and wool section of North Canterbury Federated Farmers, he says that his views are his own private views but ones which he feels confident would also be shared by many other members of the farming community. One of his main purposes for putting his views down on paper is to stimulate farmers to think and he hopes that more of them as a result will go along to meetings of Federated Farmers to make known their feelings there rather than just talk around the yards- at ewe fairs and at clearing sales. “They have dangled the carrot again and_not a word of protest from our farming

leaders,” says Mr Simmons referring to the announcement of the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Maclntyre.

“I was hoping for a more able’ pen than mine to take up the issue but here goes for starters.

“An announcement at the beginning of the season said that the lifting of half of the 20 per cent E.E.C. levy on our lamb should make our lambs worth $2O, with an estimated $4 per lamb from the levy going to farmers. “Although the price of lamb meat has moved up ahead of both the Government’s supplementary price for meat, which was raised by 24c per kg, and the Meat Board’s minimum price, which was raised by 27c, after processing charges were increased following new wage agreements and a decline in pelt and wool payments the over-all price for lamb is now averaging about $l4 compared with $l6 last year. “After the announcement was made about a lamb being worth about $2O it certainly gave farmers confidence to bid up on in-lamb ewes and ewes and lambs at the weekly sales last October. I wonder what the thoughts of those farmers are now. J “Now we come to the

announcement of Thursday, March 5 of new supplementary prices for meat in the 1981-82 season, which would make the meat of a lamb worth about $2O, and help to maintain farmers’ confidence. Are we to really believe that there will be no increase in production charges in the meantime and that all of that money will go into farmers’ bank accounts? “I am sure that if we had our $2O lamb as suggested this season there would be no need for the support measures for pastoral farming that are now proposed. “I would like to ask why a farmer should have to borrow from the Rural Bank to apply his annual topdressing requirements as mentioned in the press statements when he has been robbed of the promises for his products. “I cannot see why farmers should have to meet all of the costs of processing their lambs, sheep and cattle when these are calculated on a cost-plus basis while their returns from overseas'markets fluctuate without any regard to those costs and every New’ Zealander benefits from 85 per cent of overseas income earned by primary products’.”