THE PRICE OF STOCK

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 146, 16 March 1921, Page 5

THE PRICE OF STOCK

Sir, —What is the matter with the combined freezing meat companies operating in the Wellington district? Surely the prices offering by their agents to producers is ridiculously low —J2l 15s. per hundred for beef; 9d. per lb. for lamb; 4Jd. for wethers; 2}d. for ewes. For the last four or five (years during the commandeer the companies have had no cii.f. to pay. ' The pro-war freight charges were less than one penny. Now they are two to two and a half times as much Why make all this fuss and reduce the price paid to farmers to a non-paying level —the lowest in the Dominion? Sir Walter Buchanon stated at the ram fair at Mastertoil: "A bullock 8001 b. weight costs .£l3 in c.i.f. at. London.” The total payment i« under id. per lb., the freight is less than 2d.; add to this the freezing costs, eay, 2d. per lb., which is really paid by the producer in the form of hide, head, tail, heart, tongue, kidneys, off cuts, and fat, which at present prices should be worth Jl5 to JIG.

In the latest reports the High Commissioner puts Home-killed beef at Is. sd. per lb.; so a 8001 b. bullock would te worth 456; chilled beef, Bd., IOJd., and Is. per lb., xvorth 430 to 433. A New Zealand SOOlb .bullock should closely follow the above value, say, 480, deducting the c.i.f. 413. The producer should receive 417 for his beast, but only 414 is offered, and nothing for the other portions of the carcass as above enumerated. The latest prices obtained in the South Island are —Addington, 424 ss. to 427; Burnside, 419 10s. to 425 10s.; and at Westfield, to the north of us, 419 17s. 6d.: at the rate of 42 9s. pex- 1001 b. Mr. A. D. Long, secretary of the Auckland Farmers’ Freezing Company, congratulates the producers that, in spite of the increased freights, they are paying out 42 per head in cattle, ss. per head in sheep, and 2s. to 2s. 6d. per head in lambs more than the Wellington, producers receive. The district that is Served chiefly by the Wellington and district companies has the lowest price for fat stock, and during the commandeer the price rose and fell in an unaccountable manner. Why, Sir, should this lie so? The cattle and sheep here should be the best that the Dominion produces. Nearly all the breeders of stud cattle of nil the breeds and stud flocks of sheep have their homes here, the exception being merinos and Corriedales. The pastures are mostly English permanent grasses, not tussock and native growths, as in the South Island, nor yet pumice as to the north of this island. This is the test grazing portion of the Dominion. Is it in the method of selling the stock? This is the only district where the stock is sold direct to the companies and there is no competition—the whole thing is in their hands. They are farmer-owned works, and the producers should te able to trust them to give a square deal. The commandeered, many times handled, stale and telescoped meat, now all shipped to England, is (felling at Lamb, Is. Id.; mutton, 9d.; ewes, Sd. This assuredly is a bedrock price for the new supplies—Home-killed lamb at 2s. 2d. and Home-killed beef and mutton at Is. sd. to Is. 7d., leaves a margin that our fresh season’s meats may fill; and it may here te pointed out that English meat cannot be in large supply, as the stock returns show only thirteen millions of sheep left out of some twentyeight millions of pre-war times; and the cattle are reduced to six and a quarter millions of the eleven and three-quarter millions of the twentieth century’s early years.

And now, Sir, I must draxv this rather long letter to a close with a xvord or txvo written on behalf of our returned, repatriated soldiers, for there is a cloud of "blue funk poison gas” that is being liberated, and has already travelled as far as Woodville, and some has even penetrated, via the Gorge, to the Manawatu (though sheep sold well at the Feilding ewe fair, up to 325. 6d.). Surely the writer of the "Manawatu Notes” had his gas-mask on when xvriting in the "Advocate” his last letter, as he is usually pretty perky. The worst of the gas is it makes the stock, both fate and breeding ewes, look ring straked ana spotted in the banker’s eyes, and is injuring our returned and repatriated soldiers; both those xvho lean on the Government for support, and those who are able to finance themselves. —I am, etc., THE FATHER OF FIVE FARMER RETURNED SOLDIER SONS.

[This letter has bten inadvertentlydelayed in publication. An authority on the meat prices to whom the question raised by our correspondent xvas submitted says that the only answer to the protest made by [file xvriter is to te found in the prevailing conditions of the market, which is the reverse of satisfactory to the stock-raising community. The writer quotes beef at 355. per hundred, whereas tho price is noxv down as low as 255.; 9d. for lamb, with the price noxv down to 6jd.; andwetlliers 4Jd., now 3d. In the face of these figures, and the experience all stock-producing farmers are having at present, there is little to he said. The plain fact is that the market overseas for tfiie time being is “all to pot.”]