NATIONAL TASTES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 131, 15 March 1933, Page 8

NATIONAL TASTES.

PLANTATION STATISTICS. An important addition to the commodity series of pamphlets issued by the Empire Marketing Board is "Plantation Crops," which shows the" Erapirejs share of the ■ world trade in sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa, rubber, tobacco, and spices. The statistic* bring out that a remarkable feature of the trade in these commodities is the large number of countries dependent upon a single product for the greater part of their export trade. Sugar represents more than one-half of the total exports of Cuba, Mauritius, Fiji, Barbados, Hawaii, British Guiana, Porto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Coffee is equally- important to Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Salvador, Haiti, and Nicaragua, C'bcoa forms 80 per cent, of the exports of the Gold Coast, tobacco one-half of those of Greece and three-quarters of those of Nyasaland, and cloves two-thirds of the outward trade of Zanzibar. The United Kingdom drinks six times as much tea as it drinks coffee, while the United States drinks 16 times as much coffee as tea. South Africa leans distinctly to coffee, Canada has a slight preference for tea, while Australia is definitely a tea-drinking country. Before the war. the Empire had a. net annual surplus of about 27,000 tons of tea, but at present production only just equals consumption. While the United Kingdom is tending to retain for home consumption Empire coffee and re-export foreign coffee, it inclines to retain foreign tea and re-export Empire tea. • . On the other hand, the Empire still needs to import heavy quantities of sugar and tobacco. The United Kingdom produced in 1930, under the stimulus of the beet sugar subsidy, as much as 21 per cent, of its total requirements, but the proportion has fallen seriously since. Empire countries as yet produce only sufficient tobacco to cover the consumption by other Empire countries, apart from the United Kingdom.