PRODUCERS' DIFFICULTIES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXII, Issue LXXII, 23 May 1917, Page 5

PRODUCERS' DIFFICULTIES.

DAIRY PRODUCE EXPORT TRADE

The position of the dairy produce export trade of the Dominion is just now fraught with extreme difficulty. It will require delicate handling if rather serious financial trouble is to he averted. For want of ships there are held in the Dominion 244,000 boxes of Butter and 100,000 crates" of cheese, which have very little prospects of being shipped in the immediate future. The National Dairy Association has set out the position in a statement issued to members and published in The Post on Saturday. The free-on-board value of the produce would be approximately £2,500,000. So much capital is, therefore, locked up, and, further, is represented by what in its nature is a perishable asset. The meat freezing companies, considered as a whole, have their stores congested with meat, there being some 3,000,000 carcases in. store awaiting shipment, and in all allocations of insulated space on ships the beef and cheese are to 'have preference. The position of butter, then, gives its owners much anxiety, not so much as to the keeping qualities of the produce as to the necessity for turning it into cash at current London values. There is a possibility, however, of some of the tonnage at present engaged in the Atlantic trade carrying foodstuffs (mainly North American) being diverted to the Southern Ocean —our own trade —as soon as some relief is afforded of the food tension of the Old Country. But this, of course, will take time, certainly some months, before such shipping will be available. In the meantime, perhaps, Australia will bo able to draw upon New Zealand for winter supplies of butter, which it has been predicted will be short in the Commonwealth. Such butter could be carried back as general cargo in the ships that bring wheat to the Dominion. Some little relief would be afforded to butter producers if this couldNbe done, and in the meantime the overseas shipping outlook may have improved. In any case, it wonld seem that producers of butter must face lower values.—The* Wellington Post.