Gloomy Outlook For Butter In Britain

Press, Volume C, Issue 29634, 3 October 1961, Page 17

Gloomy Outlook For Butter In Britain

Unless the dairy producing countries can find a way of reducing export, to the United Kingdom, or unices there is another “providentially widespread drought,” there is little hope of butter prices reaching toe level "which used to be considered normal and desirable.”

This statement is made by the Tooley street firm of A. J. Mills and Company, to its September bulletin. “It is becoming increasingly obvious that the dairy situation as exempilified by the butter market, has been deteriorating for some years." the bulletin says. “Alleviation came in 1858 when most countries ran short of milk products following a generally dry European summer but since that period supplies have resumed their upward trend and stocks have once again assumed depressing proportions.

“Many nations quite properly value highly the pursuit of farming and seek to maintain the incomes of producers so that they should be comparable with those engaged in industry and commerce. Unfortunately the methods employed to bolster farmers’ incomes generally i involve the encouragement of production in excess of domestic requirements at normal

prices and Governmente are obliged to subcidis* csoporti of surplus Quantities. • “Such policies are accepted since the louses involved are offset by the benefits of achieving desired objectives at home; lower export values rarely deter those countries with marginal surpluses from dumping abroad. At the only large consuming country permitting unlimited imports of butter, the United Kingdom has become the recipient of dumped surpluses selling at well betow home market vataea.

“Producing countries have to the past been able to arrange things so that seasonal fluctuations in supplies have had minimum effects on market values. A situation has now arisen where it 18 necessary for all butter exporting countries to find a way ot limiting the annual quantities produced for export. Such an attempt was made this month under the auspices of GA.T.T. at Geneva, but the traditional large shippers to the United Kingdom market stood on their right of free entry to that market, and the minor supplying countries were unwilling to accept quotes unless all suppliers did so. “Thus no agreement has yet been reached which would either oblige producers to cut back uneconomic output or reduce domestic retail prices so as to absorb current production,” the bulletin says.