IMPORTED PIG FOODS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 194, 18 August 1930, Page 4

IMPORTED PIG FOODS.

THE TARIFF ISSUE. CANTERBURY PROTEST. The suggestion of the Unemployment Committee that cereal pig foods should be allowed into New Zealand free of duty in order to encourage an expansion of the pig industry was attacked by Mr. C. H. Hewlett at last meeting of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce Executive Council. He said that if _ the suggestion were carried into effect it would strike a serious blow at the wheat growers by competing with their under-grade wheat. If more pig food was wanted, then it should be grown in New Zealand, and so provide more employment. . Mr. Hewlett also referred to the tariff change reducing the', duty on Australian barley. That, he said, would affect undergrade wheat and, in turn, milling wheat. It would bring the price of undergrade wheat down to 3/ a bushel, and if the Canterbury farmers had to face such competition tlie effect, would be disastrous. The South Island at present supplied a great deal of pig food for the North Island, and that industry would be destroyed. Those foods would be imported and a growing industry would be ruinQcl. Instead of importing pig foods, why could they not be grown in New Zealand? Maize, for instance, was a good food, and could be grown in the North Island. If the Unemployment Committee's recommendation were carried into effect it would create more unemployment. Mr. Hewlett moved that it be a recommendation to the Government that before anything is done the Scientific and Industrial Research Department should investigate the whole problem. The motion was seconded by Mr. I. Woolf, who said that he believed the primary industries should receive every protection in such circumstances. Mr. A. C. Bretherton said that there were about a quarter of a million acres under wheat in Canterbury—with rotation about a million acres—and if the industry were affected by the removal of the duties that valuable land would, revert to grazing country. If the North Island did not see the importance of protecting the wheat-growing industry in the South, then Canterbury must protect itself. The resolution was adopted.