The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST” FRIDAY, MAY 12, 1939. Plight of Sheepfarmers

Northern Advocate, 12 May 1939, Page 4

The Northern Advocate Daily “NORTHLAND FIRST”

FRIDAY, MAY 12, 1939. Plight of Sheepfarmers

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper

THE Government’s decision to appoint a Royal Commission to investigate the difficulties of sheepfarmers raises a whole host of interesting questions. That some such inquiry is urgently needed seems quite apparent from the growing anxiety felt concerning the future of sheepfarmers in all parts of the Dominion. Those in the worst position, it seems, are the men who own or lease large tracts of high country, mainly in the South Island This country has low carrying capacity and its successful operation depends on low costs. Fortunes have been won and lost on the high bleak foothills of the Southern Alps—“the land of the misty gorges,” as it has been poetically termed; but the concern of the Government should not be for those who take up this type of country with the idea of making a quick profit and then getting out, but for those who, in hundreds of cases, have made their homes there, establishing a family tradition like that of Burnett, Mcßae, Dampier-Crossley, and other names well known in the South Island. Farmers of this type are valuable citizens, but now there is a real danger that, owing to increasing costs and declining, or, at best, stationary revenues, they may not be able to carry on. , . In the North Island, too, many sheepfarmers are havingdifficulty. Returns from wool in the past season, it is true, were a shade better, if anything, than in 1987-38, but stock prices have added gravity to the position. Sheepfarmers in Rangitikei, Poverty Bay and Wairarapa have made united appeals for help. It now remains for the proposed Royal Commission to find out what basis there is for such appeals, and, having determined, as it may conceivably do, that there is some justice in them, what may be done to assist the farmers. Here undoubtedly, the real obstacle will be met. The first obvious solution is a guaranteed price for wool, but sheepfarmers, with their pronounced individualism and ingrained suspicion of Government intervention in their business, have shown a tendency to reject any such proposition. At Wanganui recently the question was discussed by a gathering of about 450 sheepfarmers, and when a motion that a guaranteed price be sought was put to the meeting, only 23 voted in its favour. Sentiments equally hostile to the principles of a guaranteed price have been expressed at farmers’ meetings in other parts of the country. _ What sheepfarmers want, obviously, is a reduction in their operating costs rather than any measure of a Socialistic nature which might limit their freedom or restrict their independence. But whether the Government will be willing to concede them the one without imposing the other is open to doubt. In any case, the practical aspects of further farm relief must cause the Government concern. To carry a guarantee to sheepfarmers, in addition to a guarantee to dairy farmers, may prove beyond the country’s capacity, unless there is either a marked advance in prices or a marked reduction in costs.