Concern At Decrease In Egg Sales

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31632, 19 March 1968, Page 9

Concern At Decrease In Egg Sales

Increased iiitake and decreased sales of eggs gave cause for concern, the chairman of the Poultry Board and the Egg Marketing Authority (Mr G. L.) McLatchie) said in Christchurch yesterday. He was reporting to the annual conference of Registered Poultryfarmers. Mr McLatchie said it was essential to keep production in reasonable balance with demand. Too many farmers, within the confines of their own activities and financial commitments had shown lack of concern far this. Mr McLatchie said this might stem from the change of membership in the industry. For, the last 27 years poultry farmers had been relatively free to produce and dispose of their eggs to their best advantage.

That portion of production farmers consigned to the authority’s distributors for disposal had generally returned a reasonable price. National surpluses exported now returned about 9c a dozen net, whereas the average poultry farmer’s pay-out for eggs sent to grading floors had seldom fallen below 40c a dozen in' the North Island. This might have lulled poultry farmers into a sense of false security, as distributors’ egg saleq had also increased in quantity year by year, in the main absorbing the increased production, he said.

“Many farmers seem to believe that they have the right to continue to expand production,’’ said Mr McLatchie. This placed the full responsibility pn the authority for the disposal of their production. “How can individual farmers produce eggs at 40c a dozen and sell, in quantity, eggs at 9c a dozen?” asked Mr McLatchie.

He asked how the authority could be expected to sell at such a price unless the financial losses were temporarily met from reserves from Reserve Bank overdraft, or by a drew-back from the pay-outs of all farmers as an alternative to lower egg prices. If prices were maintained by the depletion of reserves, or funds on which the stability of the industry depended, the authority’s ability to stabilise marketing would be weakened.

Mr McLatchie said egg sales had risen by only 53,000 dozen in the quarter ending June 30, 1967, and only 20,000 dozen in the quarter ending September 30. “Sales fell in the December quarter to 420,000 dozen below the previous year’s figures. This fall was accompanied by an increase in intake of 484,000 dozen, increasing the national surplus in the December quarter by 904,000 dozen eggs. “As egg prices were maintained, this could well have

led the Industry to believe that we were no longer in surplus," he said. From April, 1967, there had been a gradual slackening in the sales to a point where (in December) these had fallen below those for the previous season, in spite of supplies of eggs being available during the period. New Zealand was second to Israel for egg-consumption and the higher the level of egg sales, the less the margin for expansion.