VEGETABLE PRICES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23830, 4 December 1940, Page 13

VEGETABLE PRICES

Sir, At a general meeting of Auckland Commercial Gardener*. Franklin Produce Growers, Auckland Chinese .Market Gardeners, Hindu Market Gardeners and Ohakune Market Gardeners combined on Friday last attention was drawn to a report 011 vegetable prices and to a question in Parliament by Mr. J. A. Leo, asking whether the Minister of Labour was aware of th|. rising cost of New Zealand produced vegetables, due either to the withdrawal of labour for war purposes, profiteering, inefficient, marketing or a combination of all these causes. We would draw attention to the very able article on this matter in last Friday's Jlehami. Labour difficulties are not caused so much by the taking of men for war purposes as by the Government's policy of forcing up the wages in other industries and encouraging labour into the cities. Vegetable growing is the Cinderella industry of New Zealand and with the high cost df labour in the last few years it has been very difficult to get peas, beans, etc.. picked at a reasonably low price to allow the grower any sort of living at all after bearing the overhead charges of marketing, etc. In many cases labour for picking and packing is not: procurable at all when the crop is ready for harvesting so that it has to be abandoned. if there is profiteering as suggested by Mr. Lee it is not on the side of the grower. Only a week or two ago one grower ploughed in four acres of beautiful cabbages because prices were so 1 nw that it did not pay to market them at _s per sack, sacks costing 6<l each, cartage 6d. commission 10 per cent, receiving and delivering Id. etc., and yet, at the same time one could not buy a decent cabbage in a retail

shop tinder 4d. Cauliflowers, lettuce and other lines have all suffered the same this spring. The Government has forced compulsory unionism on to the workers in this industry, the same as in others, and the last compulsory 5 per cent rise on all union wages lias, perhaps, given the workers a few pounds per annum to meet the rising cost of living, but can anyone tell us where the growers who supply the very necessary healthgiving green vegetables, etc., are going to get their 5 per cent rise to meet the rising cost of production represented in cases, nails, spraying materials, glass and timber for glasshouses and repairs, manures and cartage and so on which in the past two years have gone up by about 15 per cent and in many lines much more, let alone the cost of living, wherein clothes which wear out so quickly in the rough work are only one item? It is time that Mr. Leo and the Government looked around in an endeavour to find some way to help the grower out of his troubles, which are daily increasing. The man on the land who produces all the wealth and food required to keep the wheels of secondary industries turning is apparently the last man to receive any consideration . Where is the economic justice or the social justice we hear so much about? Cuas. [{. Reader, Secretary, Auckland Commercial Gardeners' Societv, Ltd.