PRICE OF BUTTER ADVANCED

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 102, 1 May 1915, Page 6

PRICE OF BUTTER ADVANCED

GOVERNMENT TO TAKE ACTION. The retail price of butter in Wellington advanced Id per pound U>day. It is now Is 7d per pound for best brands. Exportation to Australia continues. The following figures show the quantity of butter in cool store at the various ports throughout the Dominion on 30th April: Auckland, 16,896 boxes; New Plymouth, 8226; Pntea., 380; Wanganui, 2712; Gisborne, 222: Wellington, 20,238; Lytteltori, 7032; Timarn, 450: Dunedin, 3642; total. 59,798. Total on 30th April, 1914,' 88,062 ; total on 30th April, 1913, 64,254. There is, then, a shortage of 28,264 boxes when compared with the quantity in store last year, and which is roughly the provision made for home requirements. While it is apparently correct that large quantities of New Zealand butter have been imported by New S/xith Wales houses in order to fill contracts with houses in the Dutch East Indies, the Straits Settlements, and other places in the East, it is beyond question that butter has bee"n purchased by Victorian houses for the supply of local needs, particularly in Melbourne, where there is a great shortage of butter and the retail price is Is 9d per pound. It is understood that steps are to fee taßen by the Government at once to prevent the indiscriminate export of butter from New Zealand, in view of an insufficient quantity for New Zealand consumption being in sight. "It has come to the knowledge of the Government," said the Prime Minister to a reporter yesterday, "that butter which is being exported from New Zealand to the Commonwealth is being used by Australian merchants to fulfil contracts made with Java and other places, and the Government is issuing a Proclamation immediately providing that in future butter may be exported from New Zealand only with the consent of the Minister of Customs. This will prevent such transactions as I have referred to being carried on at a time of scarcity like this. "I am ad vised that the supply of butter in sight in the Dominion 13 lower than usual, but if it, were not for the shortage in Australia the position would not be acute. The production of butter in the South is being reduced by the cold weather having set in rather early this year, but in Taranaki and Auckland I believe that good results are being obtained. Information 1 have from the Agricultural Department is to the effect that a number of small farmers, instead of following the usual practict of allowing their dairy cows to go dry during the cold months, intend to .make butter right through the winter. Sapplies from this source, if they prove, to be considerable, should relieve the shoitage new Hift^ipated iv- ittf>_ •riflUf