Readers Write

Northern Advocate, 31 May 1939, Page 6

Readers Write

[Readers are invited to send letters j for publication in this Coltimn.i /i letter should he written in ink\ on one side of the paper, ands must hear the name of the writer, ? not necessarily for publication, | but as a guarantee of good faith. J i

In your report of the Whangarei \ bobby calf pool, I notice a few errors t and omissions which, with your per- f

BOBBY CALF POOL.

mission, I would like* to enlarge on for the| benefit of those nine? hundred odd suppliers $

• who were not at the meeting. i In the first place, the chairman] ruled that other pools should not be | quoted, as they were not a true indi- $ cation of- the returns from sale of| calves. I do not agree, as I had fig- | ures from three pools who sold to the f highest bidder. Waipu paid to sup-i pliers 7/4£ per calf, after allowing 1/3 ; per calf expenses to cover condemn-1 eds, shortages, freight and handling f charges. Maungaturoto paid 7/51-,$ with expenses 1/1, and Ruawai 7/4, | plus 1/5. Whangarei paid 6/11*, andf expenses ll£d, the dairy company pay- f ing the balance of expenses. This | gives a gross return of: Waipu 8/7*, | Maungaturoto 8/6*, Ruawai 8/9, Wha-| ngarei 7/11, which, taking the aver- j age of the other three pools, shows | u loss "oy Whangarei of 9d per calf, f or a total loss on the sale of 12,121 calves sold £454 10/9.

We contributed that loss, the chair- | man advised, to support Moerewa, | where we had £2600 invested, but Ij find that during the last depression] the shares were written down by ] three-quarters, so that the value of« our shares is now £650. So we paid, a heavy premium to keep those shares' alive. As reports have been circulating through the press, and at farmers’ meetings, that there was a likelihood of the works closing down unless they received more support, as the killings were down, I looked up the killings and compared them from 1926 to 1936, the latest date I had. I find the increased killings were: Lambs 35,494, sheep decrease 665, pigs increase 71,848, large calves increase 1400, bobby calves increase 99,170, large cattle increase 12,394, and I was informed by Mr Garland that the killings were up on my figuers since 1936, but not in proportion to the increase of production in the North. That, I think, is largely attributable to the record railings south, as reported in the “Advocate” from time to time, of all classes of store stock more particularly than fats. There must be some other cause for these false reports about the works, and I suggest it must be some trust which is finding the competition not to their liking, (and trying by fear to get more business. Mr E. Babe warned us against these trusts, but, later in the meeting, Mr J. R. Babe, on being asked straight out by the chairman if the P.M.A. exported their own meat, admitted that during the Hast two years the P.M.A. had sold all their meat through Potts and Co., who are an offshoot of Vestey’s. That, sir, is the reason why I tried to point out to the meeting that it is much wiser to sell to the highest bidder. Our chairman fought for that principle for years with our butter, so why a different policy with meat? —J. W. PARKIN.