POTATO MARKET EASIER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1046, 9 August 1930, Page 11

POTATO MARKET EASIER

POSITION IN CANTERBURY Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, Friday. The feature of the grain and produce market during the last few days has been the sharp decline in potato values, which are lower now than at any other corresponding period for some years. Potatoes were fairly firm, early this week at £5 2s 6d f.0.b., sacks in, for August - September delivery. The quotation today is £4 12s 6d' fo f prompt, and £4 10s to £4 12s 6d forward. The cause of the sudden drop in prices, is that weak holders are quitting. The Waipiata took 3,264 sacks from Lyttelton for Auckland yesterday. There are a few inquires coming to hand from outside ports. Auckland merchants report that they aro obtaining all their requirements in regular weekly instalments, and there are no indications of values in the northern city rising. The oats market is fairly quiet. A Cartons are quoted at 3s 9d to 3s lOd, 1’.0.b., sacks in, and B Cartons at 3s 8d to 3s 9d. Local B Cartons are still worth 4s, and A’s 4s Id. Chaff for prompt delivery has been sold at £7 and £7 2s 6d, f.0.b., sacks in, equivalent to £5 7s Gd to £5 10s a ton on trucks. Tho few lines of onions which are still offering can command up to £4 a ton, according to quality. There is still a little business being done in next season’s wheat at 5s 5d to 5s Od on trucks for Tuscan, according to stations. Fowl wheat is a little firmer, and is quoted at 6s Id to 6s 2d, l’.b.b., sacks extra. WHEAT PRODUCTION BRITISH CONSERVATIVE PARTY’S POLICY Certain interested parties are endeavouring to kill the wheat industry in New Zealand by tho removal the duties, using the catch-cry of “cheaper bread with imported flour.” Their argument, however, belongs to bygone days and is hopelessly out of sympathy with modern conditions. England, for instance, which has had free trade in its wheat and Hour supplies since Cobden’s days, is now realising that cheap broad is not the only aim, and that it is more important to have increased production and employmCnt than cheap bread and no employment. Mr. Stanley Baldwin, cx-Prime Minister of Great Britain, in June of this year, stated his Party’s policy in this matter as follows: “We propose in regard to wheat to give a guaranteed price to make wheat-growing remunerative . . . Dumped or bounty-fed oats must be stopped, and they shall be stopped either by prohibition or by countervailing duties.” This is a remarkable statement in a country which has so long believed in free trade, so much so that no politician previously dared speak against it. It is striking evidence of how the British public opinion is changing. In New Zealand we already have what Mr. Baldwin is aiming at. We aro growing our own wheat requirements under tho protection of a sliding scale of duties. The cost of this protection is amply repaid in many ways In tho first place, tho Dominion’s annual wheat crop is worth approximately £2,500,000. No other crop yielding anything like an equivalent return could be raised on the sarrie land. On top of this, one has to consider the employment provided by the wheat industry in New Zealand to the extent of £BOO,OOO per annum. No sane person can advocate free trade In wheat and flour and kill an industry w'hich is such a producer of wealth and provider of employment for the Dominion.—lS.