“FARMERS PAWNS OF BIG COMBINES”

Press, Volume C, Issue 29516, 18 May 1961, Page 11

“FARMERS PAWNS OF BIG COMBINES”

“I am convinced that we ‘the farmers) and the smaller freezing concerns are but pawns in the hands of the international combines who deal in our produce indiscriminately to engineer the market to suit their own ends.” said Mr David Baker, a farmer, of Cave, in a paper to the farmers’ conference at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, yesterday. Mr Baker spent at least a month of a six-month period in Britain under a Nuffield fellowship studying the meat trade.

This position could have been largely obviated, Mr Baker said, had farmers generally been interested enough in their own future and really taken advantage of the open-door policy by shipping on owner’s account or through producer organisations when free trade was resumed.

Unless something was done soon. Mr Baker said, the day might not be far distant, with rising costs, when New Zealand lamb would have reached a price which consumer countries could no longer afford to pay, or else it would have dropped to a Drice level at which the local farmer could no longer afford to produce it. The first thing that had struck him on his return from overseas was the general apathy or lack of any real concern for the future — the “she’ll be right” attitude among farmers, in particular, said Mr Baker.

"I am only too convinced and concerned that ‘she’ll be far from right’ in our industry and in the country as a whole if we as farmers take the future for granted and make no effort to do anything constructive about it,” he added.

“We hear a lot about increasing production and cutting costs. In my opinion this is a physical and financial impossibility. There is one cost, however, in particular, that to my mind is absurd and unnecessary. Have you stopped to think how much it is costing us to keep innumerable fatstock drafters in a job and a car doing a job which surely we should be able to do for ourselves?” Mr Baker said he had found resentment in Britain at the noise that had been made in New Zealand over the processing and quality of lamb for the American market, when those who had been this country’s main market for so long should be expected to accept lesser standards.

Whenever he inquired about beef. Mr Baker said, he had been told that New Zealand beef was excellent, but until continuity of supply could be guaranteed the trade w'as not really interested. “I came home convinced that the opinion of many of our leading men, and one they have endeavoured to impress upon us so often, is correct. I feel that nationally the racket of continally increasing the ewe flock by millions is suicidal until new markets are found. We should aim at the same production from a reduced flock

and build up cattle numbers quickly. One does not need, to travel far to realise that it is a beef-eating world, as. indeed, our own figures of home consumption prove.” Wool Position Few of those who had not had the opportunity to see it at first hand could realise what wool producers were up against, said Mr Baker. He visited one organisation which had since the war spent hundreds of millions of pounds on promotion and research in terylene, nylon, and similar synthetic materials. According to an economist of the International Wool Secretariat the woolproducing countries of the world had together spent on wool research only a minor fraction of the expenditure of this one firm. In the light of this, and that it was food rather than woollen clothing that the underdeveloped countries needed, it seemed that meat would play an increasing part in the economy of this country at the expense of wool.

Mr Baker said that groups of farmers in Britain had developed a system of bulk buying which could be of value in New Zealand, as farmers’ co-operatives here were no longer such in fact. The organiser of one of these groups bought all fertilisers, feeding stuffs, and even machinery in bulk direct from the manufacturers at wholesale prices. "We have an awful number of middle men getting a cut out of everything we produce and everything we use to produce it,” said Mr Baker. “I do not wish for one moment to belittle in any way the grand job veterinary clubs and veterinary surgeons, both club and otherwise, are doing, but it would appear that there is a danger of the system becoming too highly organised. Would you like to be in the position of farmers in the United Kingdom where no drugs and few remedies are available, even in an emergency, without a veterinary visit and prescription?”