EMPIRE FRUIT TRADE

Evening Star, Issue 19272, 10 June 1926, Page 9

EMPIRE FRUIT TRADE

NEED FOR INCREASED CONSUMPTION , TOO MUCH FOREIGN IMPORTATION. Pnsss Association— By Tel .‘graph—Uopyrigh* LONDON, June 9. (Received June 10, at 12.30 p.m.) The Imperial Economic Committee’s fruit report has been issued. It draws attention to the fact that £48,000,000 worth of fruit was imported into the United Kingdom in 1924, yet tho consumption of fruit per head is still much smaller than it is in tho United States. Over three-quarters of tho fruit imports into tho United Kingdom are of foreign origin. There is great scope, it says, for an increase in importation from Empire countries, by an increase in consumption and the transference of custom to the Empire. The committee is of opinion that the greater part of the fruit from foreign countries, except grapes and oranges for winter consumption, might at no very distant date be obtained from British sources.—A. and N.Z. Cable. The result would bo a corresponding growth of the overseas market for manufacturers, owing to the development of important districts of the Empire which arc suitable for the production of fruit.

While foreign countries, which principally supply the United Kingdom with fruit, bought from the United Kingdom goods valued at 7s to 17s per head of their population, the Empire countries which sent fruit to the United Kingdom bought from £3 to £l7 per head. The three outstanding facts in the present position are: Firstly, in regard to the number of fruits, of which apples were the most important. The United Kingdom market is dominated by the fluctuating overspill from the vast production of the United States. Secondly, the fresh fruit from the southern dominions comes into the United Kingdom at a time when it is relatively bare of other supplies, bui dried fruit is exposed to the competition of the low-wage countries of the Mediterranean. Thirdly, the most important fruit of the tropical colonies of the East and West Atlantic is the banana, and at present the supply of bananas to the United Kingdom, except from the Canaries, is monopolised by an organisation subject to American control. *

The committee considered throe policies, with a view to defending and developing the fruit industries of the Empire. It is unable to recommend schemes of embargo and license owing to the limitations imposed by the most favored nation clauses in various treaties.

The policy of Customs preferences, according to the decision of the Imperial Conference of 1923, docs not come within the purview of the committee. Thus the only policy which seems to immediately to he available is the policy of development, voluntary preference on the part of the consumer, based on the organisation of Empire producers, and the mobilisation of the United Kingdom consumers.—A. and N.Z. Cable.