The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News,Morning News and The Echo. TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 113. OUR MEAT SUPPLIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 203, 26 August 1913, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 113. OUR MEAT SUPPLIES.

For the cause that lacks assistant*, For the wrong tltat needs rcsietmnoe, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice oan do.

In every civilised country to-day a great deal of public attention is being directed towards the eources of the world's food supplies. There are two important reasons for this—tho steady rise in the cost of the necessaries of life in recent years, and the suspicion, in many cases already strengthened into certainty, that trusts and combines have secured a monopoly of certain source* of supply, and arc raising prices in their own interest. More especially to England these questions are of vital importance, because she depends so largely upon imported food for the sustenance of her people. It is, therefore, a very serious matter for Kngland that, as the latest returns compiled by the Board of Agriculture show, there is a definite shrinkage in the world's meat supplies. England draws her meat largely from Canada, the United States, the Argentine, and Australasia, and until recently she has depended chiefly upon the North American sources of supply. But her imports from Canada and the United States have been declining steadily for six years past; her imports from New Zealand arc not expanding rapidly; auJ the increase in her importations under this head comes almost entirely from ihe Argentine and Australia. Tho consideration of these facts is evidently producing a sense of apprehension nt Home, and more particularly because of England's isolated position and ihe danger to which her aoa-boroc trade would be exposed in war time, people are asking anxiously whether it is wiso for the country to depend for its supply of the necessaries of life upon external source.i which are, in any case, not expanding rapidly enough for iU neede, and might at v critical moment be closed to it altogether.

So far as England !■ concerned, the question of the food supply ». economically speaking, only one phaee of the problem of national production. Every country tends to prodlice tho*o commodtties for which it poesewses the greatest relative advantage*, as compared with other commodities; and England having adopted a fiscal policy based on the aeitumptitm that ehe -was destined to become, abovo everything cUe, a great manufacturing centre, must be. content to eec the induetrica that might have supplied her with food dwindle and - decay. The immense expansion o» England's manufacturing industrice during tho nineteenth century meant the corresponding decline of her agricultural and pastoral industries, and thid drove her people to depend upon other countries for the greater part of their food. Thirt in why the value of agricultural land in Kngknd has fallen during the past half century to the extent of something like one thousand millions sterling; and so long as England makes no systematic attempt to encourage her agricultural and pa*toral industries, but concentrates all her capital and her industrial energies upon manufactures, bo long most she depend upon outeide eotirctvt of supply to feed her population. There are, however, two .somewhat consoling refLcctionh that may find place her* Firstly, it w absolutely certain that if England's agricultural and pastoral industries were restored to anything like the level of efficiency and activity they once maintained, the English people could easily feed themeelvce, and oven export food products on a largo scale; eecondly, it is no lose clear that an increased demand for euch a necessary of fife ne meat is etrre to encourage the expansion of the source* of supply, and there ie ample scope in the countries' from which England imports her food to enlarge their resources on such a scale ac to eatisfy her utmost needs.

For the time being it is probably true that England's meat imports from Canada an d the Unßcd State, are not expanding as rapidly juj might have been expected or desired. But this again is a natural result of the operation of those economic laws which havo reduced Kngiand to the necessity of depending upon imported food instead of producing her own. Canada, for example, is not rcaiing cattle or exporting meat to the same extent as heretofore Ixscause the vast expansion in the Dominion's -wheat-growing has diverted capital and labour from the pastoral industries. In the United States, again, the development of manufactures in the East and the extension of wool-growing in the West, havo combined to check the expansion of cattle raising; and the rapid growth of population involving a Heavier strain on the local sources of supply ha* tended' to limit the American export. But the relative decline of the North American meat export trade naturally enlarges the possibilities open to other countries which possess great natural advantages in regard to this special form of production; and among these Australia and Now Zealand already h'oia a leading place. We may remark that the British Board of Agriculture appears to take an unduly pessimistic view of New Zealand's position and prospects in fWa particular. For thongh the statistics to which our cable message refers appear to show that British importations of frozen meat from New Zealand have fallen off dur-

ing the past eis. years, our own export figures prove that, this specially lucrative 'branch of our pastoral industries is growing Tsupidly, and that it is now one of our most fruitful sources of national wealth.

Last year wo exported nearly four and a-half million pounds' worth of frozen meat, as compared witli a little over three and a-half million pounds' worth in the previous year. It is true that for the tame being the high prices we are securing for butter and cheese in the Home market are encouraging the growth of our dairy industries at the expense of the frozen meat trade. But it is perfectly certain that as the intensity of demand for meat increases in England, a larger amount of capital -will be invested here in sheep-rawing and the export of frozen meat. And this increase in output, does not need any great increase in price to encourage it. What our sheep farmers and freezers require to justify the expansion of their trade is not co much a substantial rise in priccß ac the certainty that they can secure a larger roarrket for their exports. The relative decHne in England's importation of meat from , several other sources should give us this opportunity, and our ipastoralista ehoirtd be prepared to make the best of it. At the same time, we may point out, New Zealand may find scope for a great extension of her meat export trade in other directions. It is well known that the steady rise in the price of food in Europe has produced an agitation for the reduction or abolition of import duties on meat in several of the greatest Continental countries. Germany and Austria, in particular, have seriously contemplated throwing open their ports to foreign meat duty-free, and we need hardly emphasise the immense value of such a development to our own exporters. Even in the United States, which possess such splendid natural facilities for sheep and cattle raising, the rapid growth of manufactures has involved the comparative neglect of the extractive industries, and the clamour for cheap food will probably compel the Federal authorities to abolish the duty on imported meat altogether. On every side vast possibilities are opening up for our own pastoral industries; and if the New Zealand farmers can secure a stronger hold upon the British market, and at the same time find access to the American and Continental markets on anything like satisfactory terms, it is difficult to suggest a limit to the expansive potentialities of] our foreign meat trade in the near future, i