The New Zealand farm business and the current changes in its structure

Abstract

Farming is an industry which depends on the work, decisions and competence of a large number of individual farmers, each of them running their own farm business. These business units vary widely in the resources at their disposal and in the volume and type of production which is generated from these resources. In New Zealand particularly, the energies and decisions of farmers are essential to the well being of the entire national economy. While a great deal of statistical data is published on the farming sector, there has been relatively little emphasis on the present structure and the changes of the individual farm business. In view of the complex nature of the ordinary farm, it is difficult to present the full picture in terms of the economic character of all the farms in New Zealand. Yet, unless this picture is complete, it is not possible to assess the future of the farming sector and of the various factors which will determine that future. It is the purpose of this study to evaluate the New Zealand farming sector in terms of the changes in the basic economic nature of the individual farms themselves. The study is based on published data, most of which are derived from the detailed Agricultural Census returns which are completed by New Zealand farmers, together with the data in the Population Census results. It is inevitable that such a vast body of information, involving initially over 1 million pages of farm information, completed by over 70,000 people should lead to some difficulties of interpretation and considerable problems of distilling this vast amount of figures into a manageable and comprehensive form. In spite of these difficulties, the available statistics provide a considerable insight into the current economic developments on New Zealand farms.