AUSTRALIAN BANANAS

Hokitika Guardian, 12 March 1921, Page 1

AUSTRALIAN BANANAS

PUSHING OUT THE ISLANDS’ VARIETIES.

SYDNEY. .March 1. It is just possible th;it one of these days the New Zealand people will find Australian-grown bananas at their tariff door, knocking for admission ; whereupon Now Zealand will have to decide whether she will have this excellent, Australian fruit, or stick loyali; by the produce of her Cook Islands dependency and of Fiji and Samoa. The Australian banana-growing industry lias thriven in a remarkable way during the past few years. The rapidly extending plantations are located all through Northern New South Wales and Southern Queensland, hut chioily in the region near the boundary. They struggled for a long time against local prejudice. The first products of these plantations were generally small and flavourless, and could not hold their own against the Islands bananas. Hut new men and methods introduced great improvements, and the Australian grown banana is now a large, succulpnt, and richly-flavoured fruit, attractive in appearance and of high food value. All prejudice has disappeared, the product sells easily against the Fiji and Java fruit, and suitable banana land is selling at from £125 or acre. Production docs not reach demand, and a had feature of the business is the deliberate profiteering of certain fruit importing firms. They import Islands bananas, which they buy from the native producers very cheaply, and they sell at the rates obtained for the expensively-produced Australian banana. The Islands banana is being quickly displaced by the Australian article on merit alone —but the time is now close when the Islands article will he kept out altogether by a tariff, ft is had luck for the native, grower, whose markets are very limited; hut it will he a welcome jolt for the fruit profiteers who have battened too long on the Islands growers.