THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1949. BRITAIN’S NEEDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27112, 21 June 1949, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1949. BRITAIN’S NEEDS

Farmers throughout New Zealand will have noted with close interest the comments on Great Britain’s needs that were made by Dr N. C. Wright, chief scientific adviser to the United Kingdom Ministry of Food. Dr Wright, who is accompanied on his visit to New Zealand by Dr M. Ingram, of the Cambridge Low Temperature Research Station, was speaking on behalf of this country’s best and most reliable customers—the housewives of Great Britain—and the requirements of these customers must be studied if our primary industry is to be maintained in a healthy and progressive condition. The immediate requirements of these housewives are more meat and more butter, and in expressing these needs Dr Wright thought it important to add that these demands “ disposed of the view that margarine is displacing butter.” The 'significance of this comment should not be disregarded for, with the prospect of a buyers’ market in the future, farmers in New Zealand will have to give serious thought to the problem of more economic production, even to the extent of reverting to practices which proved their worth in the years when prices were considerably below their present level. Within limits—some artificial and arbitrarily imposed—the farmers of New Zealand have responded magnificently to the insistent demand for greater food production, but the latest figures suggest that no further expansion can be made while present restrictions exist on the availability of machinery, labour and fertilisers. Slaughterings of cattle rose from 484,000 in 1937-38 to 667,000 in 1946-47, but have receded slightly since. Sheep killings increased from 3,287,000 in 1937-38 to 4,734,000 in 1945-46, but were just over 4,000,000 in 1947-48. The number of lambs killed in 1947-48 was 12,321,000, a record figure, but not significantly greater than in 1945-46. Butter and pig meat production, however, are still greatly below the level of 10 years ago. In 1937-38 the number of pigs killed was 1,031,000; in 1947-48 it was 634,000. In 1937-38 the production of creamery butter was 162,900 tons; in 1947-48 it was 149,100 tons. If the general downward trend in overseas prices continues this decline in butter and pork production—the two are closely associated, since most of this country’s pigs on dairy farms—will be seen in its true, serious light. Great Britain’s most urgent need might be meat, but for the New Zealand farmer the future of meat production does not appear as bright as that of dairying, notwithstanding the t fact that many meat producers are also profiting from the sale of wool. Great Britain has reached a new meat agreement with" the Argentine, and is hoping to obtain an.additional 400,000 tons of meat a year from Australia as a result of the development plan for the Northern Territory. But neither the Argentine nor Australia can compete with New Zealand in economic butter production, and the time might not be far distant when economic circumstances will enforce a review of our present unbalanced farm economy. The possibility is one that should not be overlooked.