HILL-FARMING PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 151, 29 June 1939, Page 8

HILL-FARMING PROBLEM

A more than usually acute analysis of the sheep-farming industry was attempted by Mr. H. Morrison in addressing, yesterday in Masterton, a meeting of farmers who favour a meat pool based on a levy. Mr. Morrison put the hill sheep farmer in one category and he put in another category the fanner of better quality fat lamb land. The hill farmer, working on second-class land and third-class land, produces the >vpol,

ewes, and wethers section of the sheep-farming export; the other farmer fattens the lambs, and his production is estimated at, nine million lambs for export and one million for local consumption. The farmer who is suffering more today is i the hill farmer; the fat lamb farmer , has his troubles (including new diseases) and there is a longrange danger of keener competition, owing to the extension of lamb-rais-ing in Australia, but Mr. Morrison holds that it is the hill farmer who needs help. The hill farmer needs help because ewe and mutton prices are particularly low in relation to costs, and because it is on his land that the first effects (and at present the worst effects) of erosion and deterioration are felt. He also needs help because wool that costs a shilling a pound to produce sells at ninepence, and because last year staple fibre production equalled the combined wool clips of Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and South America.

If, W.-Mr. Morrison fears, secondclass hill land goes out of production, lamb-fattening land suffers also, for the hill farmer supplies the lambs which the fattening farmer fattens, and the traditional .'•[reciprocity, between Mr. Morrison's two classes of sheep farmer will.be upset if~either class is injured. So, while there are two classes of farmer, there is a unity of interest, and the problem is a-problem, of the whole industry. Nature made mountain, valley,-and plain to be complementary one of another, and strictly in accord with this mutuality and interdependence is the co-operation of the fattening farmer and the farmer on hill land. When Nature clothed the' hills""with forests* and clothed the mountains with various forms of growth right up to and above the snow-line, that vegetation garment was provided as much for the protection of the valleys and plains as for the land on which the vegetation grows. But war (waged often .for rio profit at all) has been made on the garment of forest and other growth, by sawmillers, fireraisers, and imported animals, with resultant erosion by flood and—in the case of bush lands that have now lost their forest humus—diminution of fertility. And the floods are now not only denuding the higher lands but also, as in the Esk Valley, are smothering with gilt first-class lower lands. It is therefore clear that the lower and better lands are not free from damage by the natural factors that tend to drive higher lands out of production, nor are the Quality lands unhurt by economic factors^ oppressive to hill lands. The whole situation therefore ■• suggests united action by sheep farmers, though whether they do in fact possess sufficient unity to endorse a pooling policy remains to be seen.