FRUIT MARKETING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1939, Page 4

FRUIT MARKETING

INQUIRY TO BE CONDUCTED BY COMMITTEE AT REQUEST OF INDUSTRY. EVIDENCE FROM INDIVIDUALS AND ORGANISATIONS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The appointment by the Government of a committee to consider all questions relating to the fruit industry on the marketing side was announced last evening by the Minister of Agriculture and Acting-Minister of Marketing, Mr Lee Martin. This has been done in response to a request from the industry to the Government for centralised marketing and stabilised prices. The personnel of the committee is as follow: — Mr Lee Martin, Minister of Agriculture, chairman. Mr F. R. Picot, Director of Internal Marketing, deputy-chairman. Mr T. C. Brash, president, Fruitgrowers’ Federation. Mr W. M. Benzies, secretary, Fruit Export Control Board. Mr E. J. Fawcett, Assistant-Director of Agriculture. Mr Skinner, M.P., for Motueka. Dr W. B. Sutch, economist. Mr J. E. Thomas, fruit officer of the Internal Marketing Division. Mr Martin said that the committee would examine • every aspect of fruit marketing from the orchard to the consumer, both in New Zealand and overseas. This was necessary in order to see that, if the Government' provided the facilities asked for, these would be such as to be effective in giving the producer a reasonable standard of living and ensuring that the consumer was served as efficiently as possible. This would entail the taking of evidence and a thorough examination of the functions performed by all intermediaries between the producer and consumer. *

The committee would be taking evidence mainly in Wellington and possibly in other parts of the country, and would call evidence from the recognised fruitgrowers’ associations as well as individual people with expert knowledge of the different aspects of marketing.