Pastures Past: NZ wool in Japan and Wanganui land leasing costs in 1970

New Zealand was looking to Japan as a new market in the 1970s.

Kem Ormond takes a look at the world of farming back in the day.

Today she’s found another Farm Review supplement published by the Wanganui Chronicle in the ‘70s.

One of the articles in the Wanganui Chronicle’s Farm Review in 1970 was the introduction of shearing to Japan.

It was aimed at getting New Zealand wool into the Japanese market.

The other was written by the agricultural editor at the time, about how leasing land for farming operations in the Wanganui district was too costly.

Farm Review 1970

Wanganui — Waitotara — Rangitikei — Waimarino — Patea

A vital region in New Zealand’s farming economy

A supplement to the Wanganui Chronicle

Sign of the times

A photo in a 1970 Farm Review supplement shows New Zealand shearers in Japan.

A large crowd of obviously interested spectators watched New Zealanders shearing sheep, in part of a programme organised by the New Zealand Wool Board in Osaka, Japan at Expo 70.

This is a sign of the times, New Zealand looking to Japan as a market.

The wool producer starts it off.

The shepherd gets his share, the shearer, shed hand and the classer gets theirs.

So, too does the driver of the truck who transports the wool from shed to store.

Store staff, stock and station agencies, transport from store to ship and from ship to market; they are all in a chain that depends on wool being grown, shorn, transported, sold, and eventually manufactured into garments, fabrics, and carpets.

Take wool out of the New Zealand economy and all that chain would feel some influence of slump in their incomes unless some other commodity is on hand to take its place.

We will lease our land but not sell it!

Agriculture Editor, Farm Review, Wanganui Chronicle

It is not easy to purchase land these days, far easier to obtain leases and the amount of rent payable for those leases caused eyebrows to be raised at the recent inter-provincial conference of federated farmers in Wanganui.

From investigations I have made, it can safely be said that the number of leases affected in areas close to Wanganui has been a record.

Prices too high?

“The greatest number in my lifetime,” a Wanganui farmer said to me, and he has been farming for 30 years or more.

In most cases the price asked for the land is too high, beyond the capital resources of the intending buyer, and outside a figure that would be approved by responsible lending institutions.

Time was when a dairy farmer, owner of a small area which was soundly economic in the old days, could easily find a buyer on retirement.

The land was sold at the price asked and that was that.

A copy of Farm Review from 1971, published by the Wanganui Chronicle

Sheep Country

Today, many of these holdings are not economic units, unless a neighbour is interested, the chance of selling them at the prices asked is remote.

In regard to larger areas, sheep country of the hinterland, the position is different.

Much of that land has been farmed by families and their descendants almost since it was purchased in standing bush, cleared, and made productive.

Dairy

Here are some facts collected in relation to transactions in the Wanganui area.

An elderly farmer would like to sell his land and retain the homestead and nearby surrounds.

He asks $300 per acre which the State Advances Department could rule to be too high, and rightly so.

Yet a neighbour could drive his stock from that locality two miles to graze on land he has rented at $22 per acre. A share milker can no longer make good wages on less than 120 cows.

Grain growing

Grain growers are on the look out for the type of land that is traditionally used for dairying.

They invest substantial capital in the modern machinery they must have or must be prepared to pay on contract for sowing and harvesting.

So, their aim is to lease land and not buy it.

Lower the price

In many cases owners of land have had to substantially reduce their original price.

One case for bare land not far from Wanganui, the price asked was $350 an acre, a sale effected at $200 an acre.

But in the backcountry, where access is not good, land is unlikely to be sold at the value placed upon it by the government.

One only has to look at advertisements to see that land is available and some of it quite close to Wanganui at prices ranging from $160 an acre to $500 an acre. But this seems to be the season for leasing rather than buying land.