Call to end farm trade barriers

Press, 14 July 1987, Page 22

Call to end farm trade barriers

NZPA-Reuter New York The Reagan Administration . should vigorously pursue its plan to eliminate all barriers to world farm trade, even though this would hurt Japan and Europe, the “New York Times” has said in an‘ editorial. The plan, to eliminate subsidies by the year 2000, will not be easy to sell either in the United States or abroad, but the promise of eradicating artificial hindrances to food production is well worth the effort, the newspaper said. The blow would be a hard one for Japanese farmers and harder still for Europeans, but efficient producers of food — including Australia, Argentina and Brazil as well as the United States

— would be rewarded, it said. The paper acknowledged that American farmers stood to gain the most from the elimination of trade barriers. “If Europe and Japan eliminated farm subsidies and became substantial food importers, prices for wheat rice, sugar, poultry and dairy products would rise — and much of the additional revenue would go to Americans,” it said. But the cost of subsidising agriculture is a burden most countries cannot bear much longer anyway, it said. “When will industrial societies run out of the patience, and the money, to indulge such costly pastoral romance?” the editorial asked.