ALTERATIONS COMMENDED

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29270, 30 July 1960, Page 15

ALTERATIONS COMMENDED

Economist’s View

- The meat support prices for the new export season, published this morning, are fixed well below current and expected overseas prices. Lamb, currently priced about 27d per lb at Smithfield, ranged between 18d and 27d per lb there last year. Total lamb exports by New Zealand last year were 548 m lb. Much of New Zealand’s beef has been going to the United States in recent years, and prices fetched on the United States market are not regularly quoted in New Zealand. The New Zealand Customs returns, however, show that the valuation of beef exports averaged 26.8 d per lb in 1959 (compared with 16.8 d per lb for lamb). Beef exports last year totalled 180 m lb. Asked to comment on the new support prices in relation to overseas realisations, Professor B. P. Philpott, professor of agricultural economics at Canterbury Agricultural College, yesterday commended the changes made. “Although both lamb and beef prices are so far below current realisations, market situations can change so rapidly that the prudent farmer will always keep one eye on the support, prices when planning his production,” he said. Professor Philpott pointed out that the drop in the support price for lamb was only Jd in 153 d, or little more than 1J per cent “The penny rise in beef prices, however, is substantial—in the case of ox and heifer quarter beef it is more than 9 per cent. “What will the prudent farmer read into these price changes?” Professor Philpott asked. “There is only one logical deduction to be drawn—that the Meat Export Prices Committee regards the prospects for beef as better than those for lamb. The committee has ample justification for this view, in my opinion.” The present emphasis on lamb exports, as shown in last year’s export figures, meant that the meat trade had “too many eggs in one basket.” There was only one market of any consequence for lamb, and that was the United Kingdom. Beef, on the other hand, was in demand in all the meat-eating countries of the world (though many raised artificial barriers against imports). “From a long-term view, the soundest policy for our meat industry is the encouragement of beef production. The prolonged shortfall in supplies from the Argentine augurs well for other suppliers of the United Kingdom and other markets,” Professor Philpott concluded.