APPLES & PEARS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 November 1942, Page 3

APPLES & PEARS

INTERNAL MARKETING OPERATIONS. ADDRESS BY MINISTER. ’ (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Activities of the Internal Marketing Division in the purchase and sale of the Dominion’s apple and pear crop were outlined by the Minister of Marketing, Mr Barclay, in an address last evening. He said that the main harvesting period was very short and within a period of 10 weeks 85 per cent of the total crop was sold by the growers to the department. Cool storage space, said the Minister, was available for only one-third of the crop and the remaining two-thirds had to be sold rapidly to avoid waste. This year the department placed on the market 2,109,000 cases of fruit which, for every man, woman and child in the Dominion, meant an average of over 521 b, of apples for the year. Because of the loss of the export mar,ket the total crop of graded fruit was 'made available tb the public of New Zealand. This meant that the public were receiving almost twice as much fruit now as they received in the years before the war. With such a huge quantity of good fruit being placed on the market each year ,it would be realised what a. bad policy it would be to ask the public to eat windfalls and under-grade fruit as well. This fruit had legitimate use in providing the raw materials for manufacturing apple pulp, jam and other products. For five months of the year, from March to July, the public received three-quarters of the fruit' at 3s 6d a case below cost and for the remaining period wholesale and retail prices were maintained at reasonable The Minister- also said that without the existence of the Internal Marketing Division, the procedure adopted, which involved the organised marketing of the entire apple crop over the whole of the Dominion, could not have been successfully undertaken on a basis which had protected the economic interests of the grower and at the same time had enabled the consumers of New Zealand to enjoy all the fruit as it became available.