COSTS OF PRODUCTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 July 1939, Page 3

COSTS OF PRODUCTION

FARMING IN ENGLAND.

STORE AND FAT STOCK RATES. Apropos of the comment, on the costs of production in England the average New Zealander cannot help but be mystified at the enormous spread between the cost of store stock and the price realised for the finished product. According to reports in English stock papers of mid-April the average price of fat bullocks sold at a number of markets throughout England was from 42s to 46s a live cwt. As cattle are weighed there is no guessing about the weight. Prime cattle dress from GO to 64 per cent of the live weight, which makes, the bullocks work out at 65s to more than 70s per cwt dressed weight. One of the stock papers gives the price of fat bullocks at per lb, “sinking the offal, for stock offered under the Ministry for Agriculture’s scheme for sale by grade and dead weight.” The prices are from 7id to 9d per lb, or an average of a shade more than 3d. This would mean that an 8001 b bullock is worth from £32 to £33. It is to be presumed that the Ministry’s subsidy is paid on top of this price. The store cattle market showed that two to two and a-half-year bullocks sold at from £l5 to £l7, and stores up to 20 months old, from £ll to £l4, both first quality. From an average of from £l4 to £33 supplies a healthy margin, in the New Zealander’s eyes, for turning a store beast into a fat one, even if a long period of stall feeding is necessary. Fat sheep in a whole list of markets averaged from lid to 13d per lb. There is no statement as to the weight of these sheep, but from 651 b to 701 b is not an unusual average in England. This would make a heavy wether something in the neighbourhood of; 70s. I

The average price of store sheep was 34s to 48s, in two cases 55s and 58s, so that again a solid margin is provided. The one aspect of British policy which has not been considered in all the talk about protecting the producer of meat is that of fattening costs. The consumei’ will probably be the first to get tired of it —when good chilled beef and frozen mutton can be landed from abroad at practically half the cost.