NEXT SEASON’S DAIRY PRODUCE

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 261, 29 July 1921, Page 4

NEXT SEASON’S DAIRY PRODUCE

lid. F. 0.- OFFERED FOR CHEESE « EFFECT ON PRICE OF BUTTFR In view of the sudden recovery of the butter market at Home the prospects for next season’s dairy produce are being .freely discussed. Yesterday a Dominion representative was informed by a gentleman intimately connected 'with t'he dairying industry, that lid. pel - lb. f.o.b. New Zealand was being offered factories for cheese. The offer covers the whole of next season’s output. This would mean, it was pointed out, a return for butter in bulk of about 2s. to 2s. OJd. per lb. f.o.b. New Zealand. On this basis, the price to storekeepers of butter in pats would, the reporter was inarmed, bo in tho neighbourhood of 2s 2d. per lb. The storekeepers to-day are paying 2s. Id. for butter in pats—the maximum price allowed under Order-in-Council. Similarly the maximum price at which the stores may retail butter to the public is fixed at 2s. 3d. l>er lb. , . The continuance of the present rate of 2s. 3d. per lb. to consumers would entail a Government subsidy of at least Id. per lb. At present the Government is paying a subsidy of 2d. per lb. on butter sold, for local consumption; but the period during which the subsidy is to remain operative expires at the end of August. Should tlhe Government debide to discontinue tho subsidy a retail price.of 2s. 4d. per lb. will be necessary, added our informant, in order to return factories a •price equivalent to export. The only alternative to a continuance of the sifbsidy was the lifting of the ban against a free market in the Dominion. Should the Government see fit to refuse either to pay a subsidy or create a free market, the factories’ only recourse would be, it was stated, to place all their output on the English market. Obviously the easiest way out of the difficulty was to grant producers an open market, and in this connection it (had to bo borne in mind that while butter might rise one penny in price to local consumers for a short time, any downward tendonov on the English market would likewise be reflected in the New Zealand price. “It is,” lie concluded, "simplv a case of taking the fat with- the lean, and letting conditions adjust themselves.