OUR BUTTER.

Auckland Star, Issue 38, 14 February 1929, Page 24

OUR BUTTER.

UNDER FIRE IN CANADA.

A DEVELOPING MARKET,

NEW ZEALAND'S CLIMATIC

ADVANTAGES

(From a '"Star"' Correspondent)

WINNIPEG, January 20,

"Wallowing in pasture grass three feet high," as one paper recently put it, the New Zealand I>aisv pursues an even way unruffled by the stir her contributions to the human appetite are destined to cause in a country so far away as Canada. But Daisy or Polly, or whatever the ruling pet name is nowadays, all unwittingly contributes not a little to the political disputes as well as toi the housewives of this distant land of sunshine and snow. Indeed, if the owners of the dairy herds that constitute New Zealand's main source of wealth were to hear the leading politicians of Canada turning a battery of condemnation upon the favourable terms under which their produce enters this country, or else hear one of them indulge in an equally hearty defence of those terms —they would be surer than ever that they are the backbone of the Dominion.

Nor arc the politicians the only ones to give attention to New Zealand butter. Leading newspapers find the question of its almost duty free admission a subject for dismay or approval, according to their views on the big principle of free trade or protection, which is really behind all the controversy. The Hon. R. B. Bennett, leader of the Dominion Opposition, is particularly loud in condemning the way the importation is encouraged under the reciprocal tariff arrangement with New Zealand and Australia, and one night the writer heard him devote as much as half an hour to a violent tirade against the Government that had agreed to its farmers being exposed to "this most unfair competition from a land that knows no winter and where the cows suffer no ill effects from climate, although they never have to be sheltered or hand fed." "Ruinous Competition." "Ruinous competition" was the way the '"Halifax Herald" described the importations from New Zealand the other day following a shipment to the Nova Scotia port. To this the "Manitoba Free Press," the most influential journal in Western Canada, with an enormous following in the agricultural community, makes some pertinent rejoinders. "We wonder if one reason for the importing of butter is that the Ma'ritimes do not produce enough for their own market," it remarks editorially.

And that seems to he the crux of the whole question. Canada at present is not producing enough butter for her own! consumption, and so long as this position of dependency lasts so long, it is reasonable to suppose, New Zealand and Australia will be able to find a market for a portion of the surplus in this great Dominion. Those experts who have studied the problem have discovered that the average wheat grower does not make a good dairyman when he tries his hand at what often seems to hirn as easy money. The agricultural editor of the "Montreal Gazette," reviewing the butter situation recently, attributed the decrease in exports in summer and increase in imports in the winter to an increase in the home consumption and not to any falling away in the production. He offers the opinion that production has not declined on account of the importations. Growing Canada. Dr. J. A. Ruddick, Commissioner of the Federal Dairy Branch, has made observations on similar lines, and he has also said that the dairy outlook for Canada was never brighter. The fact is that the country is growing rapidly. Immigrants are coming in every year in their hundreds of thousands, and it is questionable if, even had Canada a winter climate more conducive to dairy production, the farmers could keep pace with the demand if left to their own resources. But the climate is the real obstacle to production and it should ensure that the Dominion is always a good customer for butter selling at reasonable rates. The prairie farmer, forced to house and hand-feed his cows for about four months in the year, cannot hope to compete on a price basis with Australia and New Zealand, even if he has paid only a tenth of the price for his land that the Antipodean dairyman has paid. Nature is against him, and the city housewife will be agains; him too should his influence be sufficient to raise the import duty on butter, but there seems little fear of such an increase at present. The West, where the fanners are in their biggest numbers, is "free trade" on principle, and the farmers are not worrying so much about the butter tariff now as they were even a year ago. They have found that it does, not mean ruin after all.

In view of the tremendous expansion at present taking place in Canada, the potentialities of the market for New Zealand butter and fruit should be kept well in view by the interests on the other side. Favoured climatically and seasonally, New Zealand is in the box seat when it comes to supplying the winter difference between what the Canadians eat and what they can provide themselves. The product is good and the Canadians will eat it so along as it is buyable at the ruling world" rates. Give it to them.