The Meat Export Industry

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22465, 28 July 1938, Page 10

The Meat Export Industry

The New Zealand Meat Producers’ Board, in its sixteenth annual report, surveys an export business which, for the year ended on March 31. reached a value of almost £20,000,000 in meat and by-products. The conditions in which the industry now operates include two that have greatly increased the responsibility and anxiety of the board; and it is interesting to see how it regards them. These conditions are, of course, that the Dominion now supplies a regulated instead of an open market in Great Britain, and that it does so against increasingly keen competition, notably from Australia. It is sometimes suggested that the disadvantage of the first is a check on the disadvantage of the second, since Australian competition is controlled by the allocation. This is a fallacious argument, in two ways. In the first place, the pressure of Australian competition must be a pressure towards an increased Australian allocation, which, without proportionate enlargement of the market and of the New Zealand allocation also, would squeeze the New Zealand trade. Second, as Australian competition becomes keener in quality, the margin by which New Zealand lamb is preferred and priced up must be endangered. Special effort is required to guard against the loss of the preferential demand and of the additional return which follows from it. All this is not by any means the

sole concern of the producer; the interests of the whole Dominion are closely connected. It is, therefore,encouraging to follow in the report the plain indications of the board’s policy. Fortunately, the mutton and lamb allocation for 1938 causes no anxiety, the board’s estimates for the year’s pork and bacon shipments have been accepted by the British Government, and the International Beef Conference has so far made beef and veal allocations in accordance with the board’s estimates. The future, however, may bring forward difficult problems. The rapid progress of the chilled beef trade and of the trade in porkers and baconers may itself prove to be a factor in creating them. The more immediate problem of competition has been capably dealt with. The policy of wider distribution of supplies, of course, predates the period of intensified competition and market control but has been usefully continued, as the proportion of Smithfleld pitchings to total landings illustrates. Smithfleld absorbed 50.6 per cent, of New Zealand mutton and lamb in 1925, 40.9 per cent, in 1931, and in 1937 only 34.5 per cent. The extent to which West of England ports and Glasgow have received increased shipments appears in a table which shows that their total (in 601 b freight carcases) rose from 1,090,307 in 1929-30 to 2,347,692 in 1936-37, while the eight months total to May 31 this year is 1,405,383. Second, it is obvious that the board has been energetic and resourceful in using the selling power of publicity. Strong incentives developed when the National Farmers’ Union of Great Britain rejected a plan for an all-interests advertising campaign for meat and the possibility of specialised campaigns for English and Scottish meat emerged, while Argentina’s campaign has been running since the last quarter of last year. The New Zealand board will hardly be thought extravagant in raising its own publicity vote to £33,000 (sterling) for this year, although the levy on exports had to be increased to do it. As an insurance premium on £20,000,000 worth of business, £40,000 is not frighteningly large. But it is most reassuring of all to observe that the board candidly recognises the “ tremendous “ strides ” of both Australia and Argentina in their contest of New Zealand’s supremacy in the lamb trade. That Australian lamb and mutton exports have increased from less than 2,000,000 carcases in 1928 to more than 6,000,000 in 1937 is a less serious consideration than the advance in quality that has accompanied this increase. New Zealand, in that period, can barely show a 40 per cent, increase in quantity and it may be questioned whether any distinct and wide improvement in quality has been achieved. The board’s emphasis on the need to pursue the advantage of the highest possible quality, over the maximum range of exports, is fully justified. It is first and foremost a pursuit for the lamb producer; and the board is not looking too far ahead in appealing to the sheep breed societies for help in the effort to produce “ a type of sheep which will best suit “ for the production of the ideal lamb.” But it is also the all-important pursuit of the cattle breeder and the pig breeder. The board’s appeal to the meat industry as a whole is an appeal from well-informed leaders to every farmer who understands his own interests.