SHEEP FARMING SAID TO IMPROVE POOR CLASS LAND

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 39, 10 January 1949, Page 3

SHEEP FARMING SAID TO IMPROVE POOR CLASS LAND

Stressing the fact that sheep farming provided, in most cases, the only possible profitable method of utilising New Zealand’s poorer land, Federated Farmers have urged the Sheep Industry Commission to frame its recommendations with the long-term aspect of the position in view rather than merely providing palliatives for some of the difficulties apparent today. That was said in the final submissions made by the Federation to the Commission in Wellington. The crux of the problem confronting the industry was the relationship of costs' and prices, said the Federation’s representatives. The prices which the farmer receives 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 the inevitable fall in prices.

Suggestions were frequently made that the position could be met by a system of subsidising the production from poorer land but the Federation recommended to the Commission to examine that position carefully. Would it be possible for 20,000,000 acres of our poorer land to be subsidised by the rest of New Zealand? While, a subsidy would undoubtedly help the hill country farmer, in the opinion of the Federation it would not be a permanent solution to the problem. For the purpose of initial development, the Federation agreed that a subsidy would be of considerable value, but the main difficulties concerned 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 or not the rewards received by 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 the 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 got tended to determine what land remained in occupation. The Federation was of the opinion that the economy oj: 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 poorer type of land desired to be kept on production and allowed to be improved. That meant the basing of the economic structure of New Zealand on the farming’ 1 indstry; that a system should be adopted of relating rewards and remunerations in other industries to the rewards and remunerations which could be gained on the poorset class of land kept in production. Production from the poor hill country land was the key to New Zealand’s sheep production. It was: only common prudence, therefore, that the nations 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.