OUR PRODUCE IN BRITAIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 21, 26 January 1933, Page 6

OUR PRODUCE IN BRITAIN.

REASONS FOR POOR PRICES.

(To the Editor.)

Last June found me in a beach cottar on Brean Sands, that great expanse of on the Somerset coast. The larder was empty so I journeyed to Burnham-on-Sea, si x away, and at the principal grocery shop T found marked up "New Zealand Cheese 1/ a lb"; "Real Somerset Cheddar 1/6 a lb." j told them I came from New Zealand' and asked what caused the difference in the mice They said that as soon as our New Zealand cheese was cut the fat came out and it cracked all over, but the real Cheddar "stayed nut" I took 21b of each sort home, the weather being about 80 degrees in the shade, and next morning I found that the grocer was quite correct. I also noticed in the shops our New Zealand honey in jars was 1/ a lb and the Somerset honey was 1/0. Thev told me that the hills of Somerset, viz., the Mendips Quan tocks, Brendons and Exmoor Forest were heather covered, and that the slight taste of heather in their honey made it delicious and I found this to be correct, too. Perhaps ohe day the heather in our National Park whioh is accused of spreading, may do us a goil turn I spent three months in farming districts in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, and I found •the farmers were very 'bitter about the dumping of butter from Australia and New Zealand It had put out of employment about 20000 farmers and labourers in less than eighteen months. They said that the Danish butter was about equal to the British and until We started dumping it fetched a good price; now it was so low that they could not compete with it. After leaving the West Country, I spent two months in the Midlands and North. The manufacturers and merchants were very disturbed about the New Zealand and Australian tariffs and exchanges barring their exports to these countries. They said, "Unless you buy British-made goods we can no longer buy your produce. In, the ten or so years after the war about a hundred millions of New Zealand money made by the sale of your produce in Great Britain crossed to the U.S.A., largely for the purchase of cars, petrol and parts. As the high U.S.A. tariff shuts out manufactured goods, most of this had to he paid for in gold owned in Great Britain. Now we have little gold and you will not be paid in gold. If you in New Zealand do not take goods in exchange for yaur produce we will be forced to go to nations who will, and there are several who are willing to negotiate oil a free trade or partial free trade basis. It was only the Ottawa agreement which saved you in New Zealand having a 3d a lb duty on your butter, and I hope you will tell yqur friends in New Zealand all about it." ' L.W,