Meat Board urged to foster private group

Press, 13 June 1986, Page 2

Meat Board urged to foster private group

By

HUGH STRINGLEMAN,

farm editor

The Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, has urged the Meat Board to move quickly to foster a national farmer-owned meat marketing and processing group so as to “keep the meat companies honest.” “The companies won’t like me saying that,” said Mr Moyle when addressing the annual conference in Wellington of the meat and wool section of Federated Farmers. Since the return of sheepmeat marketing control to meat companies last December, the Meat Board has tried to foster a national farmer-owned group with its investment subsidiary, Freesia Meats. It has offered investment funds to existing works and marketing co-opera-tives for mergers or new ventures.

Co-operative directors and managements have been reluctant to combine, however, and the board has had to consider using Freesia for more direct, stand-alone investment.

Mr Moyle yesterday urged the board to press ahead with any moves

with Freesia. He called for less arguing about who was going to be top dog in a national grouping, and more action.

Mr Moyle also foreshadowed the release later today of the Brash committee’s report on livestock taxation reform and the Government’s farm debt restructuring alternatives next week or the week after.

He said the Brash recommendations would allay most if not all the fears of farmers raised by the original announcement of the Government’s Intentions for reform.

The Government seems to have learned some lessons from its public relations debacle before Christmas when a longawaited farm-aid package turned out to be taxation reforms which would cost most farmers more, and some a lot more.

Mr Moyle acknowledged yesterday that the original announcement was “perceived as an almost unmitigated disaster for farmers.”

He indicated that the Brash committee had expertly modified the proposals after numerous public submissions. The debt restructuring would be aimed at assisting farmers to “make it through the current economic crisis.”

Mr Moyle said this was a worthwhile aim because longer-term prospects for pastoral products were good; sheepmeat supplies were falling to below demand, interest rates were falling, and the inflation rate was below 10 per cent.

Mr Moyle also called for a partnership between the Government, all lenders, and farmers to address debt restructuring but not all farmers are going to like what em-

erges next week and their federation cannot give their whole-hearted support to the Government. No less a Government spokesman than the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, has warned fanners against expecting too much from the package.

Notwithstanding Mr Moyle’s now embarrassing assurance that no competent farmers would be forced off their land, the Government has decided that not everyone can be saved, a fact which the meat and wool conference tried to address yesterday.

Several delegates, often the younger men, called for more direct action to help threatened members. They wanted debate on short-term practical matters as well as supporting the longer-term economic restructuring policy objectives which the federation has stuck to since 1984. “Survival is our own responsibility,” said Mr Jim Holmes, of Taumarunui, during the course of a debate which raised such matters as picketing of mortgagee sales, and immediate reductions in public sector wages and meat-process-ing costs.