FRUIT INDUSTRY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 105, 31 October 1939, Page 15

FRUIT INDUSTRY

MARKET CONTROL

PROPOSAL REJECTED

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, October 30.

The rejection of the proposal of the: Minister for Marketing (the Hon. W. Nash) for the control of pip fruit in the coming season was unanimously approved by more than 70 Canterbury fruit growers in the city today. A meeting which discussed the future of pip-fruit growing and the Government's policy towards it for about two and a half hours finally unanimously adopted the following resolution: "That this meeting rejects the Minister's proposals and asks, that the Government purchase and export from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 cases of fruit at. a price, based on a sliding scale, with a minimum price of 7s 6d a case to the grower at the -assembly point (or its equivalent f.0.b.), and that the local market be left free." ' .

-The meeting had before it advice of Mr. Nash's proposal that the Government should buy 1,000,000 cases of fruit at 6s 9d f.0.b., with the right to sell in the Dominion any quantity it could not export, and that marketing in New Zealand should be controlled by a board on which would be two representatives of the Fruitgrowers' Federation.,

The main points of criticism of Mr. Nash's plan were that the price was too low for Canterbury (which probably would do little exporting), that the grower had to carry the risks of deterioration till the fruit was safely in an overseas • vessel, and that, as a Canterbury meeting had previously decided, there was a strong opinion that there should be no State control of the local marketing of apples.