Too many years of doing much for little

By Philippa Stevenson

Between the lines


Doomsayers' predictions of disasters of various descriptions at the end of the millennium are bound to be resonating among the country's farmers and horticulturists.

Grim forecasts have been a constant companion for years, but there is something about 1999 that seems to have brought things to a head.

Wool growers have gone from being the royalty of the pastoral sector to virtual paupers. Although they grow the same amount of wool as in the 1960s, returns have fallen from $2.5 billion to $880 million.

They rely more and more on being meat producers but struggle there, too, despite raising yields so much that they have offset a massive decline in stock numbers.

In dairying, amid the lowest returns in a decade, farmers have also boosted production and hope to raise the performance of their manufacturing and marketing sector through the mega co-op plan.

In the orchard, kiwifruit growers at last have something to smile about because of the dominance of their product in a world awash with fruit, but apple growers do not.

For the first time in 13 years, kiwifruit growers have achieved a profitable income just from their fruit. All the other years, off-farm income has made ends meet.

But apple growers have plunged into the red as prices fail to deliver on new breeds or plummet for varieties they once had almost exclusively.

Wherever you turn on the land, people are doing things better but, mostly, for diminishing returns.

Not surprisingly, they are looking to blame someone for their woes.

Traditionally, they have turned on the producer boards, but in recent times their doubts have been abetted by constant criticism from the Government and a range of economic theorists to whom any sort of collective action is anathema.

But can a small country, comprised of even smaller productive and trading sectors, achieve what it needs to by breaking into yet smaller entities, especially when the companies with whom it trades are becoming ever bigger?

The beleaguered Wool Board chairman, Bruce Munro, said on Friday that the need for collective action had never been greater. He champions a sheep-based industry and suggests there are also synergies between it and the dairy industry.

"We run the risk of predatory organisations capturing opportunities and farmers finding themselves as the peasant farmers they believe they already are," he said.

At the same time, outspoken Vegetable Growers Federation president Brian Gargiulo is urging a top-flight pressure group - the rural equivalent of the Business Roundtable - to speak out for the rural community.

Farmers face many challenges but, contrary to the doomsayers, the end is not nigh. Sensible solutions are on offer. Their task is to act together and sort the wheat from the chaff.