DRIED FRUIT CROP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 January 1942, Page 4

DRIED FRUIT CROP

HALF WILL BE LOST IN AUSTRALIA. SHORTAGE OF MANPOWER,. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) CANBERRA, This Day. About half the dried fruit crop this season, worth about £1,500,000, will probably be lost. The Minister of Commerce, Mr W. J. Scully, giving this information, said that there is a serious shortage of manpower in rural industries. Some 7000 workers would be needed shortly for fruit picking at Mildura and Leeton. The Minister said he had conferred with the Minister for the Army, Mr F. M. Forde, about rural labour shortage and an executive officer’ of the Commerce Department said that 85 per cent of the rural employees had either left their jobs for munition work or had been called up for military service. Thousands of sheep already had died from disease because skilled labour was not available to attend to them .Some cattle and sheep stations employing fifteen men had twelve of them called up. Wool is to be stored in a chain of inland sheds, so that it will not be exposed to the risks of enemy action, the Minister of Commerce said: “Shadow” appraisement and storage sheds would be built in the parts of Australia which are considered most suitable for the purpose and the safest against attack.