POULTRY INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20263, 24 May 1929, Page 19

POULTRY INDUSTRY.

'[[CHEAP EGGS AND DEAR FOOD. REDUCTION OF THE COST. THE DUTY ON WHEAT. BY UTILITY. It is hot surprising that poultry breeders »ro intensely dissatisfied with the conditions which are again facing them. Eggs have been about twopence to fivepenco cheaper during the past few months than during the corresponding period of last, year, while food is a little dearer. Pollard and bran are about the saino, and oats are a shade cheaper, but the chief grains, wheat and maize, are distinctly dearer and this makes the average cost of food even higher than it was last year, when prices admittedly heavy. It is doubtful if maize could be landed at very much under the present local price, even if there was no duty, but a real grievance exists over wheat, and a feeling bordering on indignation is engendered by the knowledge that the price is raised about 2s a bushel by the duty. It is not as if the duty was bringing -in any revenue: it is merely keeping out Australian wheat which could be bought that much cheaper, or artificially' bolstering up the price of local wheat. The national aspect of tho question can be debated by Parliament and the Canterbury growers, and the latter will have difficulty in disproving the contention that if Australian wheat was admitted into New Zealand, Canterbury potatoes would be admitted into Australia. Time lor Taking Action. If efforts are to be made to persuade Parliament to give New Zealand poultry farmers the inestimable boon of cheaper wheat, incidentally giving tho whole community cheaper bread, there is not much time to lose, for the Canterbury farmers are probably already making preparations to sow their wheat, and if they once get it. planted they will again advance the argument in favour of continuing tho present arrangement for still another year. However, the New Zealand Poultry Association, at its annual conference .last March, rather favoured the possibility of getting concession in other directions. It always seems contradictory that official advico is continually being given to poultry farmers, in common with other producers to make their calling a greater success by reducing the cost of production, and yet nearly every concerted official action raises the cost of production. This places poultry farmers under a severe handicap as compared with farmers in Australia, America and Holland, where immense quantities of eggs are produced with no handicap except tho inferior climate to that of New Zealand. The remedy, •therefore, seems to bo for the farmers to invent their own measures for more economical production, or else to strivo for a more profitable outlet for that production.

The first alternative is virtually impossible in a country where wheat is made dearer by artificial means, and where there is also a duty on nearly everything else they use, while their exportable surplus has to be sold in competition with countries where the cost is not artificially raised. Widening tliio Market. It would seem, however, that the most practicable alternative to reducing the cost of production is to improve the market, and this can best be done by increasing the demand. No really effective concerted action has ever been taken in the directioff of popularising eggs as an everyday article of diet for city residents, whereas the opening for an increased sale is almost unlimited. The real hindrance seems to be that many of the public have lost all confidence in the opportunity to buy absolutely fresh eggs. I myself have bought guaranteed fresh eggs from a producer—not for household use—and have found in them an occasional chicken riearly half developed! There is no safe rule that will really enable a producer to absolutely guarantee the condition of eggs unless tie determines that under no consideration ■will he sell an egg unless he is positive that it comes from a nest that was cleared the previous evening. To show how easy it is to guarantee eggs and retain a customer, one farmer near Auckland adopted the plan of never selling any except thos;e from nests cleared the previous day. All the eggs were dated, and his guarantee was that if any egg was found anything but absolutely fresh 21 days after that date he would replace it with a dozen. In several years of trading he never had to replace a single egg!