N.Z. envoy attacks farm policy

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 23

N.Z. envoy attacks farm policy

NZPA staff correspondent London The Paris-based O.E.C.D. has delivered a harsh warning about global agricultural overproduction and subsidies, and New Zealand’s London High Commissioner has criticised the results in Europe. New Zealand’s top diplomatic representative in Britain, Mr Bryce Harland, told the London Chamber of Commerce a New Zealand farmer received a little over£3 for a lamb, while the British farmer was paid about £l5.

“We can produce the same lamb competitively

for a fraction of what it costs in the United Kingdom. “The British consumer is paying four or five times as much as he needs to for what he wants to eat,” Mr Harland said.

In Paris, the O.E.C.D. issued a report from its committee for agriculture which said:

“Agricultural price support policies — although more moderate than in the past — continue to provide a level of prices which results in production well in excess of market demand. Despite this, incomes are insufficient for a large group of farmers.”

Public spending on agriculture had reached alltime heights and consumption in developed countries had already reached a level that could hardly be exceeded, the committee said. .

"The need to implement policies that are not only consistent at the national level but also compatible with other countries’ policies... is becoming increasing evident.” The O.E.C.D. committee said all its member countries should join together and ’’make a serious and lasting effort to carry out the adjustments that are necessary to reduce the costs of agricultural poli-

cles and to prevent increased protectionism and conflicts over agricultural trade.”

Mr Harland told the London chamber that New Zealand appreciated Britain’s work for reform of Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy "to obviate surplus production of milk and other products.”

He also said that reform of the policy would not be a substitute for New Zealand’s continuing right to export set tonnages of butter and meat to Europe.

The British market was still most important to New Zealand, even if "we are now allowed to sell

you only half as much butter as we did when Britain joined the Common Market.”

He had a supporter in Mr Newton Jones, chairman and managing director of a London export and insurance company, who urged him to get across to the people of Britain and Europe the advantages “if they were able to purchase the products of your soil and your climate.”

Mr Jones said: “The Common Agriculture Policy now seems the disaster it was from the start. There just isn’t enough money in Europe to support it.”