POTATO PRICE INCREMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25305, 3 October 1947, Page 8

POTATO PRICE INCREMENT

ALLROUND INCREASE OF 25/- A TON

HEAVY YIELD THIS SEASON

Christchurch merchants, have been advised of the October increment in the price of potatoes to producers. The new price, which will be effective as from to-day, embodies an all-round increase of 25s a ton. The new price to be paid to farmers on the basis of f.0.b., sacks in, will be £lO 15s a ton for whites and Dakotas, and £ll 5s for Suttons and King Edward varieties. . This year’s increment is better by 10s a ton than the price paid last year for October delivery, and has also been made effective a week earlier. The additional rate is, according to merchants, an allowance to cover advances in the cost of sacks, and transport. T%e bulk of the potato crop in North Canterbury has already been marketed, and it is expected that in another two or three weeks deliveries will cease. •

The season has been a good one for potato, growers in North Canterbury. Produce merchants handling large quantities of the crop estimate the yield at about six tons to the acre, which is higher than the average year’s return of four to five tons an acre. Last year 258,000 sacks of potatoes were shipped froYn Lyttelton. With a few weeks of this season still to go this total has already been exceeded by 29,323 sacks, and the Waimarino is at present loading another shipment of 12.000 sacks for the Auckland market. This shipment will bring the increase over last season’s shipments to 41,323 sacks, and there will be further shipments before the season ends. Detailed figures of this season s shipments from Lyttelton to date are as follow: Destination. Sacks. Wellington Auckland 89 ’§§ 2 Napier and Gisborne .. .. 59,622 West Coast ports, N.I 37,581 West Coast ports, 5.110,286 Total .. .. 287,323 Discussing next season’s crops, merchants said that it was rather unusual to have good yields in two successive seasons. Prospects at the moment were that the acreage in potatoes in the 1947-48 season would at the most only equal that of the season just closing, and the production, if anything, would be lower.