AUCKLAND'S DAIRY PRODUCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12241, 9 April 1903, Page 4

AUCKLAND'S DAIRY PRODUCE.

We are enabled to. give this morning the export of dairy produce and meat from Auckland for the year which ended on March 31 last, a period coinciding with the gross export returns of the colony which we published yesterday. It will be seen, by comparing the two returns, that of the 263,13Tcwt of butter sent away by New Zealand in the year only 39,030cwt went from Auckland, although the dairying possibilities of the province are such that we should be able to report our exports by the hundred thousand hundredweights. The value of Auckland exported butter was £185,535, as compared to the £1,269,676 of our colonial butter export. We have no desire whatever to underestimate the development of Taranaki, as a butter province, or of Canterbury, as a meat province, but we most strenuously maintain that it is to the interest of the entire colony, as well as of this particular province, that the lands of Auckland should be made available lor this profitable industry. While we take a great deal of satisfaction in the increase of our colonial dairy produce trade Ave can never forget that it might long ago have been much greater had it not been for the amazing impediments which have been placed in the way of Auckland land settlement. The province is certainly £185,000 the richer by our last year's exportations, but it ought to have been at least half-a-million pounds sterling the richer, so that we practically sustain a heavy loss which hampers severely the development of the province and the growth of the ' city. Not only this, but we are so much the less able to bear the necessary revenue charges called for by the General Government. We cannot lay too much stress upon this phase of the question, since everybody suffers from the retardation of settlement and the consequent limitation of our export powers.