SWEET ORANGES
Production in Dominion MINISTER’S OPTIMISM “By dogged persistence and intelligent experiment the problem of growing unlimited quantities of good, sweet oranges in New Zealand has been solved,” said the Minister of Agriculture, Hon. C. E. Macmillan, when opening a Dominion conference of fruit exporters yesterday. The New Zealand public, he added, had always had to pay dearly for sweet oranges owing to the cost of importation and losses in transit.
The Minister said that only this week he had seen and tasted a larger variety and better quality mandarin grown in a nursery at Avondale than lie had ever been able to obtain in any shop selling imported fruit. The same nursery also had a variety of magnificent navel oranges. In size and flavour these were also superior to the orange one eould buy. He could with confidence recommend citrus fruit growers to plant sweet oranges. The result would be that in a very few years New Zealand would be able to supply its population with a very useful article of diet at a price that all could pay.
The total value of eating oranges imported Into New Zealand last year was £122,544. These oranges were supplied by the following countries: British West Indies, £7616; Australia, £84.206; Fiji, £702; Pitcairn Island, £492; Japan, £144; U.S.A., £29,382. People complained that they were not getting tlie quantities of oranges they could consume, and the growers had to remember that there was a market around them worth about £200,000 or £250,000 waiting to be developed. The deputy-chairman of the Executive Commission of Agriculture, Sir Francis Frazer, who addressed the conference, said he was interested to hear the Minister's references to the citrus fruit market. In the last few' weeks the members of the commission had been specially interested in the possibilities of citrus fruit growing near Whangarei, and there was a possibility that the day was not far distant when the Dominion should be able to supply its own market.
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Bibliographic details
Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 256, 26 July 1935, Page 13
Word Count
329SWEET ORANGES Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 256, 26 July 1935, Page 13
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