HILL LANDS KEY TO DOMINION’S SHEEP INDUSTRY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22820, 15 December 1948, Page 8

HILL LANDS KEY TO DOMINION’S SHEEP INDUSTRY

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, Dec. 15. Stressing the fact that sheep-farming provided in most cases the only possible profitable method of utilising New Zealand’s poorer land, Federated Farmers of New Zealand, Inc., urged the Sheep Industry Commission to frame its recommendations on the longterm aspect rather than to provide palliatives for some of the difficulties apparent today. This was stated in final submissions made by the Federation to the commission in Wellington. The crux of the problem confronting the industry \Vas the relationship of costs and prices,, said the federation’s representatives. ’ Prices which the farmer received were fixed abroad, mainly today by negotiation with the United Kingdom Government. Present high prices could not last indefinitely, and therefore New Zealand would be wise to prepare for a recession from the present level; New Zealand’s house had to be set in order, ready to meet an inevitable fall in prices. 20,000,000 Acres of Poorer Land

Suggestions were frequently made that the position could be met by a system of subsidising production from poorer land, but the federation recommended the commission to examine that proposal carefully. Would it be possible for 20.000.000 acres of poorer land to be subsidised by the rest of New Zealand? While a subsidy would undoubtedly help hilNcountry farmers, in the opinion of the federation it would not be a permanent solution. For the purpose of initial development, the federation agreed that a subsidy would be of considerable value, but the main difficulties were concerned with working and maintaining that poorer country. A relatively small decline in overseas prices would bring immediate trouble to the hill-country farmer.

The vital question, therefore, which the commission had to determine was whether the rewards received by the other sections of the community were proportionate to the effort which they exerted, in relation to their production. and the effort exerted by the farmer and the farm worker on poorer land.

Of recent years, said the federation, the share of the national production which various sections of the community had received had tended to be determined by the power of pressure groups, rather than by logic. What other sections received tended to determine what land would remain in occupation. Farmers’ Rewards Under Scale The federation was of the opinion that the economy of the Dominion would never be firmly based until the needs of the land, which the nation required to keep up its exports, determined what other people in the community could be allowed to draw from the pool of national production. The federation submitted that the rewards attainable in other industries and undertakings in New Zealand should be related to the rewards which could be attained on the poorest type of land which the country desired to be kept in oroduction and allowed to be improved. That meant the basing of the economic structure of New Zealand on the farming industry; that a system should be adopted of relating rewards and remunerations in other industries to the rewards and remunerations which rould be gained on the poorest class of land kept in production.

Production from poor hill-country land was the key to New Zealand’s sheen industry. It was only common prudence, therefore, that the nation’s economy should be based on that land, and not allowed to be a haphazard construction under which that land became not the base but merely an impotent competitor for a place.