PRICE OF THE POTATO.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5733, 31 October 1905, Page 5

PRICE OF THE POTATO.

NEW POTATOES. £2B PER TON WHOLESALE. A RISING MARKET. AUCKLAND'S “NEW” BADLY AFFECTED. • From inquiries made, from one of the leading produce merchants in Wellington wo have to announce that there is no decline in tho price of table potatoes, nor is there the slightest indication of a fall in the immediate future. Prime table potatoes (old), mostly trom Marlborough, wore quoted at £l4 to £l4 10s per ton yesterday, and new potatoes—a dish for the wealthy epicure—are fetching a-s high as £2B per lon wholesale. To the housekeeper who has to pinch to make “ ends meet,” this means that the wholesale price to* day is 3d, or in cases 2?d per lb. What this means retail to those who have to buy at per lb is best known to themselves. It was suggested that tho very high price of potatoes had had a marked effect on the output, of bread—■ that “the staff of life” was supplanting tho tuber with the working classes. Mr W. Tonics, of the Wellington Bread Company, probably the largest bread bakers in tho city, gives tho assurance that, afi far as his company is concerned, there has been no appreciable difference in the output. Air J. Alitcbell, of the firm of Lacry and Co., has just returned from a tomround the Auckland province, made specially in tho interest of his firm, to learn something about the potato crops in those districts largely devoted to tho cultivation of the tuber. Ho states that quite 80 per cent, of the new season’s crop is affected by the blight, and the outlook could hardly bq worse. Tills was in spite of the fact that the plants had been sprayed in many districts with the Bordeaux mixture at least four times. The past month or two had boon very wet in Auckland, as elsewhere, and often rain would descend after a field had been sprayed, and so to a certain extent counteract tho spraying. It has been a trad business for tho potato-fanner, as each spraying has cost him 15s per acre, and some sprayed thoir plants as many as ■six times, owing to the rainy season. When in Messrs Lacry and Co.’s warehouse yesterday afternoon a “ Times ” reporter was shown a sample of Oamaru ■'.Up-to-Datc ” seed potatoes, which had just arrived, and were ready for picking over. Tho potatoes were splendidly developed, some weighing a.s heavy as a pound, but about a third were far gone —absolutely rotten—with the disease. As to the future, Air Alitcbell states that tho firm had made arrangements to import largely from Tasmania and America, but hoped that some of the other potato-growing districts of tho colony would turn out better than Auckland promised to do.