Another works to close 'any day’

Press, 24 July 1986, Page 8

Another works to close 'any day’

By

HUGH STRINGLEMAN

in Wellington Another big meat works will close any day, the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Moyle, told the Dominion conference of Federated Farmers in Wellington yesterday. "I have been advised to expect the announcement and I think others will follow,” he said. Mr Moyle announced the imminent closing in the context of telling farmers that major restructuring of the meat industry was already occurring and that “farmers may have already gone further down the road of reform than they realise.”

He said the lamb kill to the end of June was down 22 per cent to 29.2 million, the adult sheep kill was down 37 per cent to 5.7 million, and the adult cattle kill down 17 per cent to 1.36 million. “Farmers are clearly experimenting with dif-

ferent regimes on farm,” he said.

“This is of profound significance to the whole industry and the nation in general. “It has unquestionably shaken the meat-process-ing companies and I predict there will be some rapid changes in the next few months, even weeks.” New Zealand would not be taking up the option to supply more on the Iranian contract and companies were withdrawing their marketing staff from reconnaissance missions overseas because they did not have the product to sell.

“Nothing has given me so much encouragement in a long time than to hear the president of Federated Farmers laying on the line to the meat processors and exporters and the others who serve primary producers that they are going to be forced to shape up or ship out,” said Mr Moyle.

"Now, it would seem, I may be at last getting the farmers of New Zealand in behind me.”

Mr Moyle had one piece of good news for farmers when he foreshadowed a more detailed announcement of the setting up of a trust fund with the reserves of the now defunct Phosphate Commission, believed to be about $3O million. The earnings from the trust, he said, would be used to fund research into agricultural marketing and product development. In thanking Mr Moyle for his address, the junior vice-president of the federation, Mr Owen Jennings, summarised the three main areas where farmers wanted the Government to act immediately.

These were a real reduction in Government spending, quantified earlier by the conference at 10 per cent; an elimination of tariffs; and the

freeing up of the labour market

Mr Jennings said that he did not think moving areas of Government business into corporations constituted real reductions in spending.

“Nor were we impressed when the Prime Minister used a report by an economist discredited earlier by the Finance Minister to justify the present pace of tariff reform,” said Mr Jennings. Mr Lange told the conference that fanners should not go overboard on tariff reduction because it would save them only 2 per cent on costs. He took this assessment from a paper by Professor Bryan Philpott, of Victoria University, which was recently used by exporters in an approach to the Government on the value of the New Zealand dollar. The Philpott analysis was dismissed by the Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas.