HIGH POTATO PRICES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20392, 22 October 1929, Page 7

HIGH POTATO PRICES.

SHORTAGE IN SYDNEY*

VALUES REACH £35 A TON. [fbom otra own coaaEsroNDENi.g SYDNEY, Oct. 18. Sydney housewives have had to pay enormous prices this week for potatoes.Stofcks from Tasmania, whence Sydney receives so large a portion of its supplies, are nearly exhausted. On Monday now potatoes' from tho Clarence River district in northern Now South Wales—the first of tho season —brought £35 a ton.This is tho highest price for many years. Tasmanian Brownells jumped £3' to £2B and Whiteskins £2 to £25 a ton.- .Two trucks of Victorian iWhitcskina were [cleared at £26 por ton. The market ha 3 soared to . its present levels owing to tho alarming'manner in which Tasmanian supplies have dwindled. Shipments this week totalled o'ily 8900 bags. If Tasmanian crops had been normal 20,000 bags would have arrived. Tho island State's exportable surplus is fast failing, and pending tho arrival of improved supplies from othef sources abnormal prices are expected to rule here for weeks to icome. Many of the potato crops in tho low-lying Hawkesbury River districts near Sydney have been ruined by flood this week. . As a consolation onion prices are now dropping, and shipments_ from Geelong and Melbourne are down m pnee.to £2O a ton for choice varretwsa. in prices will take place as .new taxw' become available,, which they are d)mg steadily" at,>presont^