GROW ASPARAGUS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 280, 25 November 1937, Page 3

GROW ASPARAGUS

DEMAND WORLD WIDE. ADVICE TO NEW ZEALAND. EMPLOTMENT PROSPECTS. The possibilities of establishing a canned asparagus industry in the Dominion on an extensive and payable scale and thus providing work for many people are put forward by Mrs. A. Bradley, an Aucklander, who has travelled much and given considerable study to the growing and canning of asparagus. For a long time Mrs. Bradley has advocated the setting up of the industry, and the fact that asparagus growing for canning purposes was carried out in the Hawke's Bay district last year and 12,000 tins were produced, has encouraged her again to refer to the subject.

Mrs. Bradley points out that last year asparagus to the value of £25,000 was imported into the Dominion from overseas, and says that the output from the Hawke's Bay district has been sold for 15 years ahead. She says the worldwide demand for asparagus is unsatisfied and that there are so many areas available in New Zealand suitable for the successful growing of the vegetable that the opportunity should not be lost to extend the industry now started in Hawke's Bay. Experiments in shipping asparagus to ] London in cold storage have proved highly successful, the article having reached the London market in excellent condition and commanded a good price. At present California, where asparagus is grown by the mile, supplies threequarters of the world's supply, and Mrs. Bradley says she has seen freight trains leaving San Francisco for New York laden with fresh crops. From New York the asparagus was forwarded to London, where the demand was always a ready one, the supply never equalling the demand. She instanced the case of a grower who, some seven years ago, decided to plant 500 acres of asparagus in New South Wales. In three years the plants matured and a canning factory was started. To-day the canning factory employs 400 hands, and the output is distributed to all parts of Australia. There are 800 milee of asparagus under cultivation. Mrs. Bradley Jβ emphatic in stating that the success which has been achieved in California and New South Wales can be repeated in New Zealand. She considers the industry should not be confined solely to asparagus, but to the canning of peae also. Last year canned and packet peas to the value of £3800 were imported from Australia alone, and she holds that not only could this need be supplied locally, but an overseas trade could be opened. Last year huge quantities of tomato pulp were" imported from Australia. New Zealand spent £100,000 on the importation of canned peaches, apricots, pears and fruit ealad. Mrs. Bradley suggests that it should be unnecessary for New Zealand to make any further importations of this nature, since all our requirements could be grown locally if the industry were properly organised.