Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1940 THE MARKETING OF FRUIT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 6 December 1940, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1940 THE MARKETING OF FRUIT

FRUITGROWERS will have read with more than ordinary interest the Parliamentary debate on the marketing of fruit. The Minister of Marketing (Mr Nash) made a good reply to the criticism offered, but there is more evidence than that produced by Opposition speakers that everything is not just as Mr Nash paints it. It is true, as he said, that the Government has taken over the marketing of apples and pears because it was asked to, but consumers would like to know on what grounds Mr Nash can say that the fruit has reached them at lower prices than ever before. It would probably be truer to say they have been sold at more irregular prices than ever before, due to the inability of the Marketing Department to feed the market properly.

The Department suffers from the disabilities of many other Government Departments. It is unwieldy, and often unable to make quick decisions. Neither has it practised the fundamental principle of success in selling New Zealand’s apple crop to our own people: that it is better to sell two cases of apples for twelve shillings than one for ten. The greatest determinant of the consumption of apples in New Zealand is the capacity of the consumer to buy them, and apples are out of the question for most family men at sixpence a pound, on the Minister’s own admission, the price ruling to-day. The grower received an average of l-5d for them. They should never be allowed to reach that selling price if the Government wants the apples eaten and not relegated to the tip.

The internal controlled marketing has not been a marked success so far as the consumer is concerned. He has not been given what an organisation of this kind should be able to provide: plenty of apples at a price at which he can buy them. Were this principle observed it should be possible to induce New Zealanders to eat all the apples we grow. Neither has last year's internal marketing been a financial success. It now transpires that it will result in a loss of about £200,000, which will be offset approximately by the surplus realised on the 580,000 cases exported. From the producers’ point of view the price paid last season was inadequate to give the fruitgrower a net return equal to that obtained by other sections of the community, but it probably saved the grower and allowed him to carry on, keeping his orchard in good order in the hopes of better things to come. Mr W. J. Broadfoot stated that they were pulling up apple trees in Nelson, but nothing of this kind is going on on a very extensive scale. Where orchards are being taken out it is, in most cases, because the owner hopes to do better with another crop, generally tobacco. But the growers find the scheme wrapped round with much more red tape than they have been used to. The plan is not nearly elastic enough and tries to apply one rule to widely differing cases. Moreover, it needs to be administered with more imagination than has been evident during the past season. One of the problems the organisation has yet to solve is that of evolving a plan whereby the whole crop, not only good fruit, can be made use of as food for human beings or for pigs or other animals. This next season the marketing organisation may profit by its experience. Doubtless some good work has been done, but the wider objective has not been achieved. There are two parties the Department must keep in mind: the producer and the consumer. But the producer soon disappears from the picture. His price per case is fixed in advance and when his crop is harvested he knows what his return is to be. That certainty of income is probably satisfactory to him. But, after that point, all attention should be focussed on the consumer. This is where imaginative organisation comes in. Some people may have to be taught to be “apple-minded,” but the most of them —especially those with growing families with voracious appetites—will be eager to buy apples if they are reasonably priced. Consumer psychology is only the reactions of the ordinary man to a given set of circumstances. If this truth were realised, and selling policy arranged accordingly, New Zealand would be surprised to find that she could consume most of the apples she grew .and was able to square accounts into the bargain.