FRUIT PRICES

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23263, 25 February 1941, Page 12

FRUIT PRICES

TO THE EDITOR Of I’ll E PRESS. Sir—The Minister for Marketing publicly complains about alleged actions by some fruitgrowers. In this statement he is reported to have claimed that the Government intended to make fruit available to the consumer at the lowest possible cost. When one looks in shop windows and sees fruit marked at Bd, 9d, lOd or more for single pounds of fruit he might be pardoned for asking why this is the lowest possible cost? As a benefit to the public's overtaxed purse, such prices are ridiculous. Perhaps one would not mind if the grower received a reasonable share of this “lowest possible price,” but does he? I asked my greengrocer what he had to pay at the market for lemons. He replied, "Eighteen shillings a case.” This was a special shock, as a visit to Keri Keri at Christmas time revealed the fact that many growers were pulling nut their lemon trees because they were forced to sell to the Government only, and at. the unprofitable price of 4s 6d a case. The “lowest possible cost” in this case would thus seem to be 13s 6d for each case. Where does this go? Perhaps this is not the hardest question to be answered by the Government-instituted Marketing Board. It is to be hoped that by next election time the consumer will have awakened to the fact that Gpvernment experiments in interfering with private enterprise are too burdensome to be tolerated any longer.—Yours, etc., FRUITGROWER. February 24, 1941.