PRODUCE MARKETS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume XVI, Issue 1287, 16 November 1888, Page 2

PRODUCE MARKETS.

The Minister for Lands was interviewed by Mr W. D. Grant, dairy produce expert and merchant, late of New York, but now of the firm of Boyd and Grant, London, who is travelling through this country for the purpose of opening up an export dairy produce trade with his firm in the English metropolis. Mr Grant has been met with an unexpected difficulty in the shape of the Australian drought, which has caused nearly all the New Zealand dairy produce output to be bespoko in that direction for this year ; but of course this is only a temporary check to his enterprise. He asserts, however, that there ia a tendency on the part of the factories in this colony favor the Australian trade before the English. Mr Grant is of opinion that the dairy farmers of New Zealand are not able to make the best of the splendid possibilities at their disposal. The condition of the Colony as regards its dairy produce development now is akin to what that of Canada was some twenty years ago. The Canadian system is now recogaised as one of the most perfect in the matter of technical education on the subject. The great drawback to New Zealand, however, says Mr Grant, is the pendant manner in which one part of the Colony will play itself off at the expense of all the rest of the country, and the wholesale depreciation by New Zealanders themselves of the Colony generally. If the American, he says, were to make a practice of running down that country as New Zealanders do theirs, there would very seen be nothing but a mud hole, as all the capitalists would leave it. It is Mr Grant's intention to appoint an agency in the Colony for the export trade with his firm ; but it does not appear to be settled as yet where the headquarters of the agency are to be situated.