Economy causes Land Settlement Board to delay allocation

Press, 16 July 1986, Page 2

Economy causes Land Settlement Board to delay allocation

Wellington reporter The Government has accepted the advice of the Land Settlement Board that no sheep or dairy farms should be available for the 1986-87 season. Deferral was necessary because it was not viable for the farms to be settled, said the Minister of Lands, Mr Wetere. The Government could not provide the large concessions that would be needed with the present high interest rates and farming costs. Being burdened with a large debt was nd way to start a farming enterprise, and he just could not put new young farmers in that position. The sheep farms that were for settlement would be kept, and continue to be farmed as part of the present farming blocks.

To keep faith with dairy companies which had undertaken expansion in the anticipation of new dairy units, the Lands and Survey Department had further examined the merits of increasing the level of existing sharemilking arrangements, Mr Wetere said.

The new Land Development and Management Corporation would become operative on January 1 next year. The new corporation would assume responsibility for the land development and settlement role of the old department The Opposition said that Mr Wetere had confessed to economic defeat in announcing a further deferment of farm settlement this year, the Press Association reported. The Opposition’s spokesman for lands, Mr

lan McLean, said the decision was another example of the failure of the Government’s policy on agriculture. "Thousands of young men and women have sweated and struggled and saved for years to buy a farm of their own. Even under today’s conditions, the ballots for land settlement would be full,” he said. The Government had two options to allow immediate settlement The first was to sell the farms at the price it had brought farm land down to; the alternative was to settle farm families on a leasehold basis at current market rentals. With the depressed land values, those would be very low.

The settlers should have the right of purchase at any time they wished, said Mr McLean.