AID FOR GROWERS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20095, 15 November 1939, Page 8

AID FOR GROWERS

| AUSTRALIAN PROPOSALS ORDERLY MARKETING Of particular interest to New Zealand fruitgrowers is an article from a Melbourne paper received by Mr. G, G. Wilkinson, Hawke’s Bay representative on the Fruitgrowers’ Federation. “To prevent serious losses in the apple and pear .industry, the Federal Government is taking immediate action to pay out advances to growers to enable them to keep going and to inaugurate a system of orderly marketing in all States to prevent a ‘disastrous flood of surplus fruit on tlie Australian market,”' it states. The scheme of the Commonwealth is then outlined ns follows: For 75 per cent of the marketable crop on the tree, growers are to be paid 2s (id a bushel, with a further payment of 2s (id a bushel for picking, grading, packing, stacking and delivery to a central depot. For the other 25 per cent of the crop Is 6d is to be paid. This portion of the crop may have to be destroyed, but in this case Is bounty may be paid to processing firms up to a capacity of processing last season. The scheme, the article comments, means that every portion of the marketable crop will receive some payment, and in. addition it allows for a considerable expansion of markets by the supply of good fruit at a reasonable rate. According to Mr. Wilkinson the plan is substantially the same as that the New Zealand growers are urging the Dominion Government to adopt in view of the difficult position in which the industry has been placed by the outbreak of war.