Farmers see big policy changes in Europe

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 18

Farmers see big policy changes in Europe

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

Farmers’ organisations in the United States agree with New Zealand farm leaders that recent changes to the European Common Agricultural Policy are fundamental and likely to be farreaching, according to Federated Farmers’ president, Mr W. R. Storey.

That view was in contrast to the way the two Governments read the situation. “Neither the New Zealand nor the American Government feels there has been much change yet,” he said. Mr Storey, in Washington after a visit to Canada, was speaking after meeting with American farming leaders and with senior administration officials. He said American and New Zealand farmers felt the C.A.P. changes were something that could be built on, and had pushed prospects of an all-out trade war between Europe and the United States "down the

track.” The next year or two would show how fundamental. or cosmetic, the European changes were, he said. The Americans felt there was a need to keep the reforms rolling. Mr Storey said he was “reasonably hopeful” that American farm leaders realised the dangers of agricultural protectionism and would be trying to adopt “a more rational approach” to it.

They were saying that the payment in kind programme, under which farmers are paid to let land lie fallow, could not survive as a permanent institution, Mr Storey said.

American farm leaders ;vere starting to travel rore to gauge opinion in )ther countries. Mr Robert Delano, the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the biggest United States farming organisation, hoped to visit New Zealand in September.