Farmers get $45M in aid

Press, 25 November 1981, Page 18

Farmers get $45M in aid

PA Wellington Price supports to woolgrowers has cost the taxpayers nearly $45 million with about one-third of the country’s wool sold, according to a Wool Board spokesman. The price guaranteed to farmers by the Government before the sale season opened was 320 c a kilogram. Prices now being fetched at auction range between 250 c and 260 c. . The Wool ■ Board's econo-mics-manager, Mr David Beggs, says that while a modest improvement in price is expected, it will not be anything dramatic. ; The price was unlikely to go past. 270 c before Christmas, he said.

: The price could improve after that, but “it depends just about entirely on what happens overseas.” Any big improvement depended on an upswing in the economics of the world’s wool-buying countries. In some of those countries “things are not particularly optimistic.” Farmers see the Government’s supplementary minimum price scheme as essential, to maintain growth in agriculture. If . growth was to continue, a farming spokesman said, short-term lulls in the prices received by farmers had to be supplemented; A lot of the need for price supports stemmed from high inflation and its effect on farmers’ costs.