shing and hunting native birds for food. Officially claimed by the British Crown in 1840, in the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth, New Zealand became Great Britain s agricultural hinterland, supplying first grain and wool, and then-after the development of refrigerated shipping in the 1880s-meat and dairy products to Britain and other parts of the British Empire. late as 1964, New Zealand sent 61% of its total meat exports (lamb, mutton, beef and veal), 94% of its butter, and 87% of its cheese to the UK [6]. Disruptions of this pattern during the First and Second World Wars, however, encouraged New Zealand to adopt increasingly protectionist policies, placing tariffs on imported industrial goods and establishing Producer Marketing Boards for the major commodity groups from the 1920s, designed to represent farmers interests and to act as single sellers in the global marketplace. Zealand suffered a major economic depression in the 1930s and enjoyed a boom period in the 1950s, as post-war consumption levels rose and war-time technologies found new agricultural applications like fertilizer and pesticide production and improvements in transport. (On New Zealand s rugged landscapes aerial topdressing of pasturelands was widely adopted, and helped boost productivity.) Factors threatened the comfortable prosperity of NZ agriculture in the 1970s [6]. The independence of the Pacific Island of Nauru in 1968 spelled the end of New Zealand s supply of cheap phosphate rock, mined there and on other so-called phosphate islands since the early part of the century. Four years later, in 1972, Britain s decision to join the European Economic Community (now the European Union) signaled a major realignment of global trading relationships, in which New Zealand s position as a Commonwealth country would no longer guarantee special consideration for its agricultural products. Finally rising world oil prices triggered a period of escalating inflation, making it increasingly difficult for farmers to secure good prices on the international market.
2. The agrarian reform
Governmental policy at this time exacerbated the situation by seeking to boost agricultural production based on the hope of greater returns-farmers were offered subsidies to purchase more fertilizers, and tax breaks for increasing herd sizes-further depressing commodity prices through oversupply. In part because of the recognized importance of agriculture within the national economy, farmers were also offered price supports, low-interest loans, disaster relief, weed-eradication subsidies and special training programs to get them through the hard times. As the ...
