SPOON-FEEDING

Taranaki Daily News, 1 December 1926, Page 16

SPOON-FEEDING

CLAIMS OF FRUITGROWERS. HIGH SUBSIDY AND DEAR FRUIT. THE OLD STORY. (By' “Taxpayer.”) The fruitgrowers ajain have succeeded in extracting from the Government a guarantee of a return of not lees than a penny' a pound for their exported apples and pears. Last year a similar guarantee cost the State approximately £190,000, to say nothing of the very considerable expenditure incurred in supervising the shipments and adjusting the records and accounts. The arrange-' merit between the Government and the growers this year is slightly different in detail from that of last year, but in effect it is likely to be practically the same. Last year the growers were guaranteed a net return of one penny' a pound at their local grading station. This involved a large amount of accounting and checking; at the expense of the State, and proved cumbersome and otherwise unsatisfactory.

Now, according to the official statement. the Government provides “an overall flat guarantee for next season’s export fruit of Ils 6d a case, this to include all costs and the owners’ net guarantee.” In other words, the State is qpmmitted to cover to the extent of one penny per pound any sale that falls short of Ils 6d a case. The State’s maximum guarantee, there, is 3s 6d per case. The Minister of Agriculture, in commending this arrangement to the growers, emphasised the fact that it would ensure to the growers a return for their fruit and encourage them to keep down expenses. That the agreement appealed to the growers as a body may be j«dged from the fact that their representative expressed himself as well pleased with its provisions. So much for the producers’ point of view. THE TAXPAYER’S VIEW. The taxpayer, not unnaturally, will look at the arrangement from another point of view. He will regard £109,000 as a large sum of money'. It is sufficient to pay interest and provide sinking fund on two millions of the public debt. It. is drawn from the rest of the community for the benefit of a mere handful of fruitgrowers who have no more claim upon the bounty of the State than have the poultrykeepers, the potato growers, the market gardeners, or any other section of producers. It is desirable, of course, that the public should have abundance of cheap fruit. If the growers were fulfilling this end they would be entitled to generous consideration. Even if they' were establishing an outside market likely to be of national consequence they would deserve encouragement. But they are doing, neither of these things. Apples and pears for the greater part of the season are as dear in New Zealand as they are in England. The £109,090 odd spent by the Government last year in helping the pro ducers in their enterprise did no more towards establishing a market in London than did the first dozen cases sent from these stores years ago. Between 1923-24 and 1924-25—the latest returns available—the area of bearing commercial orchards in the Dominion declined from 20,084 acres to 19,547 acres, and the area of non-bearing orchards- from 3754 acres to 2651 acres. In the later year, of the 2,105,996 bushels of apples produced only 219,702, a little more than 10 per cent., were exported. These figures ttsll their own tale. They show, irrefutably, that the Government’s spoon-feeding of the industry has neither increased the number of growers nor enlarged the volume of exports. Why, then, should this burden upon the taxpayers be continued?. THE GROWERS’ DEMANDS. The pleas of the deputation from the Auckland fruitgrowers that waited upon the Minister a day or two lie fore he announced the renewal of the subsidy were: (1) That they should be protected from competition with island fruit during the glut of the season; (2) that a little more assistance should be given to the growers, to the length, say, of doubling the subsidy; (3) that American grapes should be debarred from the Dominion “while the United States was erecting a tariff wall against New Zealand fruit;” (4) that the Government should drain certain swamps that were interfering with the operations of some of the growers; (5) that the Government horticultural station should cease to make wine and offer - wattle posts and bark for sale; and (G) that the Government should take over such work as bud-selection, which to the fruitgrowing industry was what cow testing was to dairying. The Minister was not so compliant as he evidently was expected to be, but the precedent of the apple subsidy was before him, and in due course the trouble of the friutgrowers and the Government again were shifted on to the shoulders of the long-suffering taxpayer. As regards home consumption—at any price from 4d to 8d per pound—the New Zealand growers are protected by an import duty of I%.per lb on apples and pears, and yet their representative had the amazing assurance at the Auckland interview to suggest to the Minister that American grapes should be debarred from the Dominion while the United States —which imposes a dutyequivalent to one farthing per lb upon apples and pears —“is erecting a tariff wall, against New Zealand fruit.” No wonder the American officials sometime gasp at the sublime ignorance of the average New Zealander concerning the internal affairs of the great republic - .