PRODUCE EXPORTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 198, 22 July 1937, Page 8

PRODUCE EXPORTS.

Figuhes issued by the Primary Products Marketing Department, this week, covering dairy produce shipments for the eleven months to the end of June indicate with certainty that production in this respect for the year which ends this month is considerably in excess of the last twelve months period, and is another indication of how remarkably the call to dairy farmers to increase their output in the last few years has been responded to. Already in the case of butter the shipments are greater by no less than 8 per cent, (over 11,000 tons) and cheese close on 3 per cent. (2414 tons). It is possible that these figures will yet show a higher comparison, for the June shipments were heavy and July’s may also be greater than those for the corresponding month of last year. New Zealand’s butter output benefited by drought conditions in Australia in the early part of the season, otherwise the market might have reacted seriously to our detriment in respect of this class of produce; and although the situation has been recovered by Australia to some extent lately, her shipments are not likely to catch up by the end of the term, because the total for butter is 70,341 tons for the eleven months as against 85,840 tons in the same period of the previous season. An interesting conrparison is the fact that these shipments represent only half the amount sent from New Zealand, which is 140,049 tons as against 128,976 tons in the year before. It is shown also by the statistics that foreign countries are gaining a bigger hold in the British market; in the first six mouths of the export year Empire countries shipped to Britain 134,208 tons against 146,073 tons in the first half of the 1936 period, and 158,150 tons in the same period of 1935. On the other hand, exports from foreign countries have risen from 94,105 tons in six months of 1935 to 108,416 tons this half-year. New Zealand is practically the only Empire country to show an increase, while Denmark, the Netherlands, the Argentine, and Latvia all are shipping more than in 1935. A crood deal of New Zealand’s future outlook in the butter market hinges on Australian production, for it has been shown often that there is an inclination in British marketing policy to regard the output; of both Dominions too-etlier as “Empire” production, and on this tariff, quota, and preferential bias depends. The developments in the next few months should prove highly interesting to the producer.