The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 1932. GROWTH OF PASTORAL INDUSTRIES.

Hokitika Guardian, 22 August 1932, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 1932. GROWTH OF PASTORAL INDUSTRIES.

The outstanding feature of New Zealand’s export trade in recent years, say® a Statistics Report, has been the increasing specialisation of this Dominion in pastoral industries (using that in a broad sense to include dairying). Ratoral produce now accounts for some 93 pe'r cent of New Zealand’s total exports as compared with 80 per .cent. in the years immediately before the war. Wool has long figured as a major item in New Zealand’s export rade, but a substantial export of butter and cheese is a comparatively new development. These exports, f'"in an annual figure of some £2 n:i l,! ons each before the War, have now risen to such importance that exports of butter have, in a single year, been valued at as much as £l3£ millions, and of cheese af as

much as .£8 millions. The development of this trade is bound up with closer settlement in. those parts in New Zealand best suited for dairy production, especially Auckland and Taranaki, and it is no mere coincidence that between the 'last two census enumerations the New Zealand urban areas which showed the greatest percentage population .increases were New Plymouth, Auckland, and Hamilton. New Zealand some years ago supplanted Canada as Britain’s largest single supplier of cheese; while, as a supplier of butter, this Dominion is surpassed only by Denmark, but. is followed closaly by Australia. Except wool!, butter is New Zealand’s most important export to-day; and, indeed, ; so much greater has been the recent slump in wool than in butter, that : in. 1930 and 1931„ wool fell to third place amongst' New Zealand’s and butter had. actually risen to first place, and meat had iioen to second place. These commodities are following by cheese, . skins, hides, and pelts.; Corresponding to the great relative growth in New Zealand’s pastoral exports, there has been a marked decline in the Dominion’s trade in mineral! products, agricultural products, and .timber. From the early ’sixties until the early ’seventies, gold actually constituted more than one-aalf of New Zealand's total resources, but with the gradual petering out of the more accessible resources, .produce of the mine had dropped to less /than 8 pea* cent, of New Zealand’s total exports before the outbreak of the Great War. The present figure isi about If per cent. Over £2,800,000 :of gold was exported in the peak year, 1 1866, a. figure which was'nearly reached again in 1906, foil-, lowing the development of new methods of treating "low grade ores. In 1931 gold was ; exported to the value ox only £500,000. With the .premium oilvgqld that has emerged with the suspension of/ the Gold Standard; in Britain, there are signs of a revival of the 1 gold mining industry in New Zealand.,- • Goli;l production lias been hnndicapepd. since. 1914 by the fact that. tlie. price .of this product was fixed bj Aot of Parliament, whereas practically, all other conpiodites have fluctuated ; freely in price. Broadly speaking, ext’uctivl? industries (in-1 1 dustries ’yi-hicih - rob nature without thought of replenishment) are essenrially less ' permanent in/ their character than farming and manufacturing industries. Almost (the : only towns in Nlew 'Zealand which’ 1 showed a smaller population., at the 1923 than at the, J. 921 censsis' were .bid mining townships, and' in this connection the geographical ! concentration, of. decadent towns soleJjr in the old mining 'dis* th'li'its' cf Ofti’tnl Otago, Westland, and' Hauritkl is .eloquent. The only exceptions are a few towns whose glory has departed , witn the . disappearance of the timber stands which formerly maintained flourishing sawmills in their vicinity. Timber (exports •• date baejk to the visit of the brig Fancy from Sydney in 17.94, twenty-five years after Cook had noted in his log the possibilities of this district'as a source of masts or ppars, not to mention flax. Exports of timber have dropped 'since just before the War from 4 per cent, to. only 1 per cent, of the tot'll exports, and indeed the Dominion is now actually a. timber importing country on balance. It is only during the past decade that there has be°n any sign of an awakening of a forestry sense in New Zealand. In the past we have bben content to mine rather than farm our forest resources. The most hopeul feature of the present outlook as regards the Donrnion’s exports is the fact that we have come more and more to rely upon industries which do not rob natural resources without thought of replenishment, but which are based on a permanent foundation of prosperity.