APPLES AND CREAM

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 109, 4 November 1926, Page 5

APPLES AND CREAM

AGAINST IMITATION

THE FRUIT CONTROL QUESTION.

"I have been a fruit grower for a good many years, and have been bitten by the numerous fancy schemes launched for bur salvation, but this extra fancy Bchenie is, to my mind, the sad-, dest and maddest of them all." Thus writes, in the Nelson "Mail," a fruit grower opposed to the proposal that the New Zealand Fruit Producers' Board should undertake further or absolute control of the apple export. He quotes dairy control as evidence that fruit control must fail: — "In view of the disaster which has overtaken the dairy farmers, one had a right to expect the Fruit Control Board to adopt a policy of extreme caution; and at least to wait and see if it is possible for the Dairy Controllers to bring their ship out of the troubled waters it is in. "But perhaps the Fruit Control Board is in blissful ignorance of the fact that many dairy farmers have been ruined; that all have been hard hit; that the finance of the country has been jeopardised, thanks to what the late Prime Minister referred to as a new experiment. ... "Grip this: New Zealand appies today top the Home market by a comfortable margin. Colonel Gray confirms this. What, then, is there to gain by the proposed experiment? Are we likely to reach a still higher level on the market? I doubt if even the most optimistic members of the board would suggest that. ' "On the other hand, it makes one shudder to think what we shall iose if the experiment fails, as fail it must. Many of us have put the best years of our lives, and our little all into the game. , . . Can we afford to experiment? Is it prudent, with nothing to gain, to relinquish the substance for the shadow?"