CRITICAL BUTTER MARKET

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 121, 26 May 1925, Page 6

CRITICAL BUTTER MARKET

There is obviously something wrong with the British market for imported butter. The fact is disclosed in the cablegrams of the High Commissioner published in " The Post " last evening. They described the market as " very slow owing to poor demand and very large stocks accumulating." In a dispatch (also published last evening) received by the New Zealand Producers' Co-operative Marketing Association, Ltd., a dairy farmers' company, fuller information was given, ( and it showed that something is pending that may quickly develop into a severe crisis in the butter market. It was stated that the'dairy companies (presumably of New Zealand) appear in an unfavourable light in British mercantile eyes by withholding butter from the market; also that some newspapers are calling upon the Government to intervene in the interest of the public. The association's message concludes: "Position unfortunate and affecting trade." In an endeavour to understand the position—and last year's exports of butter were worth £11,641,000 to the Dominion, and those the year before £10,689,000—it must first be realised that there is a great struggle in progress in London between the New Zealand producer and the British merchant. The former is not convinced that prices current represent the true value of the goods he has to sell; the latter will not, or cannot, meet the prices demanded—and so business is largely suspended. There is, in fact, a deadlock. The butter being the property of its holders, if they are not'inclined to sell it is difficult to see what the British Government can do to make them. We believe it can do nothing, whatever it could do and did do under stress of War. The position is certainly " unfortunate " ; and there fore demands from the Dairy Produce Control Board* as the official mouthpiece of the producer, a clear and candid explanation, and, if necessary, setting him right in the eyes of the British people.