State Aid for Sheep Farmers Sought

Grey River Argus, 30 August 1948, Page 2

State Aid for Sheep Farmers Sought

A recommendation that superphosphate should be brought back to a relatively cheap level and that under present conditions that • the price should be £7 per ton,- ex .works, is contained, in the interim report, of the Sheep Industry Commission, which was presented in the House of Representatives this morning. As that figure was below the present cost of manufacture, the commission recommended the reintroduction of the subsidy scheme to reduce the current price to £7 a ton, the cost ofesuch a subsidy to be a charge on the pool accounts of the farming industrics. This, stated the commission, would create a desirable cycle of increased: production, which would in turn put increasing surpluses into the pools. The commission recommended a special technical committee be appointed to examine in detail the possibilities of increasing manures, and of locating additional works throughout the Dominion to reduce the present high costs of transport from the works to the farm:. This committee should be fully directed on the importance to New Zealand of making that an increasing ration of fertiliser provision for all fertiliser required as e. prime maxim of State policy and must be made available to the farmers on marginal land, who are improving their holdings. The commission is of the opinion that the high-country farmer, liable

to snow risk, should be able to offset his losses by setting aside some of his profits in the good years in order to minimise the insecurity arising from snow losses, with a limitation of 10s per sheep. The commission recommended the fixing of a maximum freight charge of 30s per ton to cover the combined road-rail-sea cost of transport and to be reimbursed to the extent of any pay-

ment made exceeding 30s per ton on the production of his receipts, such payments to be a charge on the Consolidated Fund. The commission said: The farming community has viewed with considerable alarm the recent increases in price and we share the industry s concern. We realise that these actions were taken with the. very best of intentions, but nevertheless we

feel that an error of judgment was made: and that the increased price, while perhaps, it is fully recouped to some farmers, is only partly recouped to the store sheep breeder; and that the change has resulted in a practice of diminished manuring of marginal country, which can only lead to rapid pasture deterioration. Such deterioration should be viewed as a national disaster to-day.”