THE PRESS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1982. Pushing the farmers’ luck

Press, 13 September 1982, Page 20

THE PRESS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1982. Pushing the farmers’ luck

The drought in Canterbury is a compelling reminder of the risks that always surround the business of farming. The country’s number one income-earning industry, producing food and fibre from water, air, and soil, faces many risks: the risks from weather, disease, pests, fire, as well as the uncertainties of the markets. A fanning industry, and individual farmers, must be equipped to reduce or withstand these risks; otherwise the industry, or the farm, will fail sooner or later.

Nearly 70 per cent of New Zealand’s export earnings come from pastoral industries.. Every year some of these earnings are significantly at risk. Severe snowstorms at lambing time in Southland and Otago can decimate that region’s annual returns from farming. Fruit crops are exposed to the dangers of insect pests and frost damage. The country’s entire meat industry has been put into international quarantine because of suspicious vesicular lesions on the. feet and mouths of pigs. .A prolonged drought, such as that in Canterbury, can cut lambing percentages and wool weights and stunt flock replacements. One view that may be taken is that the farmers alone, who elect to face the risks, should take their chances, do their best to protect themselves against failures, set their production goals within safe margins, and stand upon their own feet and their own insurance devices. On an individual farm this is about what happens. It is not the whole story because relying wholly on individual caution does not serve the national interest.

The need to observe quarantine rules and regulations forbidding or controlling imports is one easily visible example of how a wider view is required. A chance or careless importation of foot and mouth disease or of Mediterranean fruit fly would be a body blow to the whole country. A less obvious example lies in the country’s demand for ever-increasing output from the land to earn overseas exchange and in the pressure put upon the farmer to bridge the gap between his own costs and earnings by raising the output from his land. Higher productivity is admirable; at the same time, stretching the capacity to produce may increase the exposure to risks, both physical risks and financial risks. As a matter of public policy over several decades, the w’hole community has been required to share some of the cost of the risk because the whole community benefits from putting the industry' to full stretch.

Every farmer in New Zealand is aware of how often in recent years the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has called for

higher stocking rates and greater production. A senior M.A.F. .official last month continued the run of such statements by referring to the “aweinspiring ability” of New Zealand’s land to produce more. Most farmers must also be aware of recent work by the Economic Service of the Meat and Wool Boards which demonstrated that it was only by substantially increasing per hectare production of meat and wool that the, average New Zealand sheepfarmer has kept ahead of farm inflation that has been running over 20 per cent. To have failed to increase production would have meant annual net losses on farms since the mid--19705.

The 1980-81 Agrow campaign by Federated Farmers publicised a rural production target for the late 1980 s of $5OOO million. This figure was passed about one year later. Canterbury, the country's largest sheep-raising region, was well to the fore in. the rush to increase production. After a run of reasonable seasons in the late 1970 s the land has now struck back. Drought has stripped one million head from the province’s ewe flock and robbed some 5000 farmers of up to $lOO million.

Researchers and advisers are now acknowledging what many farmers suspected: Canterbury was over-stocked. Without so many mouths to feed, Canterbury farms would not be so hard hit by a dry year. Can farmers be blamed for carrying more stock than the land will sustain through bad years as well as good? Would not a grocer be counted a fool for not selling enough lines to ensure himself an income?

Clearly one way of maintaining and continuing to increase production for the welfare of the country, and they farmer, is to minimise the effects of drought by being able to irrigate the land. Irrigation is not expensive when compared with the losses from drought. Most dryland farmers in Canterbury would go further into debt to meet half the cost of getting water if the other half were subsidised. The cost of irrigation is also small when compared with the cost of multi-million dollar schemes to produce energy for manufacturing, transport, processing farm produce, and for domestic consumption. Securing farm production can be just as important as projects to save fuel imports. Minimising the risks to ’primary production is in the interests of the country as a whole. If irrigation of the plains is considered to be unacceptable, for whatever reason, droughts will continue to remind this province that very little more in the way of dryland production can be expected from Canterbury.