Farmers Afraid To Clear Land, Is View: Help Wanted For Development

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 June 1948, Page 6

Farmers Afraid To Clear Land, Is View: Help Wanted For Development

[SPECIAL REPORTER] WESTPORT, This Day. The fear that should farmers improve their properties by clearing and bringing into production more land the Government would step in and take over their holdings for the settlement of ex-servicemen was a factor retarding much farm development in New Zealand at the present time, according to views expressed at the annual conference of the West Coast Federated Farmers held at Westport yesterday. The delegates were discussing a remit from the Westport branch, proposing that a land scheme be brought before the Government to enable the difference between the value of land and the cost of improving it to be met.

“In view of the heavy cost of clearing land, particularly in this district where it costs £3O an acre, my branch considers that the. Government should assist by way'of a subsidy or otherwise,” said” Mr R. Stevens (Westport) proposing the adoption of the remit. “It is not reasonable to ask a farmer to pay the heavy clearing costs when nothing would be obtained in return for the outlay when the property was sold,” he said.

“The Government controls prices and everything else ans it should control the cost of clearing land,” suggested Mr J. Skilton, “and it should make it more attractive for farmers to go ahead and improve their properties. Everything has gone up but the price of land. There are subsidies on coal, and every ton of coal subsidised is a ton of coal lost, but the opposite would apply to a subsidy for land clearing, and every acre bleared Would constitute another asset for the country.” In England, added the speaker, the Government paid a 50 per Cent, subsidy on land improvements and for extra stock carried.

A suggestion that expenditure by a farmer on land improvement should be free of tax was made by Mr R. Jennings (Karamea), who said that this would give farmers some encouragement. “I don’t, think that is going far enough,” said the chairman, Mr W. H. Martin. “The money saved in taxation still would not compensate a farmer for his outlay.” Higher Rates? “We should be prepared to say what scheme we want to go forward,” said Mr P. J. O’Regan (Inangahua), who pointed out that if farmers were prepared to boost the value of their land by the method described they should also be prepared to submit to increased rating by- virtue of the higher value of their land and also to accept higher death duties. “There are a few nuts to crack and I don’t know whether it would be Wiser to bear the ills we know than to fly to others we know nothing of,” he concluded.

Reference to a land committee set up to discuss this question with the Minister of Lands, was made by .Mr .Scott-Davidson, president of the Auckland Federation, and a member of the Dominion Council, who stressed the need for any information on the matter to be forwarded by the West Coast organisation in detail to this committee to allow it to present a full case. “Scared To Improve” “We in the north are faced with the problem Of breaking in land and then having the State acquire it,” he said. “It is an urgent problem and farmers are scared to improve, scared to develop. This is holding up progress, and all the while the Government holds hundreds of thousands of acres of land itself under management. Men cannot get it, and returned men are becoming frustrated at their inability to get on to properties. Those who get properties are not getting land that needs to- be developed, but the very best which has beCn brought, to a high standard by careful husbandry. These young men have to follow experts and no wonder they fail and production falls.” Mr Scott-Davidson added that the farmers gave up their properties not at their own price, but at a price fixed by the Government. “And it is not a fair one,” he said, giving details of how an elderly man on giving up his farm could not retire on the interest of the capital received from the sale of the property. The difficulties of land clearing might be solved, suggested Mr H. G. Carter by the formation of a co-op-erative organisation—with a Government subsidy—which would receive priority with regard to the purchase of high powered machinery for land development, or by this machinery being imported by the Government and hired at reasonable charges to farmers.

The conference decided to seek definite proposals from all three centres on the West Coast for submission to a central committee, which would collate them in a report submitted to the next quarterly meeting.