Positive plan needed

Press, 26 December 1986, Page 15

Positive plan needed

Farmers must plan their own future and not wait for politicians to impose conditions on them, the second annual Agribusiness Workshop was told in Wellington. A visiting Fulbright Fellow, Professor Tim Wallace of the University of California, Berkeley, said unless farmers draw up a “positive plan” which includes realistic costs and director for the industry, they are no better than the politicians.

Worldwide lack of demand for raw material products meams that

farmers who are “price takers” will suffer, he said.

The only defence is to become a “price maker” which involves further processing of the raw materials into food.

“Farmers do not supply food, they provide some of the materials which make food. You do not see quarter chickens running around on farms.”

The other ingredient for successful farming is control of land, prefer-

ably without land ownership- 2< How resources call be

controlled is much more important than ownership, he said. “If I can control your farm for 10 per cent of what I would have to pay for it, I can do something else with the other 90 per cent it would have cost” Professor Wallace noted “real pleasure” on the future existence of “middle sized” farms in New Zealand. But he did not think the family farm would cease to exist because of the tenaciousness of the occupants and farms are “a good place to raise kids.”