EMPIRE MARKETING BOARD.

Otago Witness, Issue 4063, 26 January 1932, Page 12

EMPIRE MARKETING BOARD.

The people of the United Kingdom are proving themselves more and more willing to buy from within the Empire. Many factors have combined to bring about this encouraging result. More scientific attention is being paid to-day than ever before by Empire producers to the need for supporting the natural high quality of their goods by grading and orderly marketing in all its branches, while distributive traders in the United Kingdom have shown themselves wholeheartedly resolved to further the progress of Empire buying along sound economic lines. Then, again, consumers in the United Kingdom are becoming alive to the excellent and wide range of Empire products and of the importance of Empire buying, a matter which even the world-wide economic depression has been powerless to retard. The Empire Market-

ing Board’s (formed in London in 1926) aims briefly stated are “ to increase the quantity, and improve the quality, of Empire products marketed in the United Kingdom and to make Empire buying a national habit.” The Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, in a comprehensive analysis of the board’s work at an exhibition of the board’s posters in Auckland recently, stressed the many benefits so far achieved. Much of his Excellency’s address was devoted to an examination of the manifold services rendered by the board to New Zealand. “It is valuable,” he says, “ from an economic standpoint, and, calculated in its effects, if fully appreciated by its beneficiaries, to help materially in the profitable economic development of land industry, and, incidentally, to shorten the period of the present industrial depression co far as it affects this Dominion.”

In discussing the subject, his Excellency began by enumerating the grants for scientific research which the board had made, directly and indirectly, to New Zealand. “ The investigation ” —now in progress—“ into the mineral content of pastures, I place first, seeing that 94 per cent, of New Zealand’s total exports are pastoral products. The limiting factor for their output is not the number of sheep, cattle, and other stock upon the farms, but the quantity and quality of tiie herbage forming the raw material which, through their medium, is transformed into marketable commodities. This in turn depends upon the mineral plant food available in the soil. In this respect New Zealand soils arc notable among the soils of the world for their mineral deficiencies, especially in respect of iron, lime, phosphates, and iodine, results in so-called deficiency diseases. “ Second only in importance do I place the research being conducted in this Dominion, in close co-operation with that of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station at Aberystwyth, in Wales, in connection with tiie breeding of herbage plants. The aim of this investigation is the ability to select for pasture formation the best and most permanent strains of the more valuable grasses and clovers, to determine the conditions in which they will best thrive, and to indicate what countries are best fitted to grow the supplies of reliable seed for which there is a

large and growing demand throughout the Empire. There are already strong indications that New Zealand will prove to be the best breeding ground in the world for such valuable pasture plants as perennial ryegrass and cocksfoot, and possibly also for the more permanent white and red clovers. Hawke’s Bay ryegrass and Akaroa cocksfoot already have world-wide reputations, and if they can be raised in this country true to type, and of high germinating capacity, the production and export of their” seed should become an extensive and profitable New Zealand industry. These two lines of pasture research are intimately connected with the systematic soil survey which is now being undertaken under Government auspices, aiid which seems calculated to prove of unfold value in the future rapid development of hitherto undeveloped land in this

Dominion, and the confident settlement thereon of a much larger farming community than has hitherto been effected,

or could prudently have been undertaken, at least at the public expense, without undue risk. Such a soil survey involves co-opcrative effort on the part of an expert geologist, chemist, soil physicist, plant botanist, and land surveyor. “ I can conceive of no better investment in the public interest,” Lord Bledisloe says, “ even in these days of economic stress, than the continued expenditure of the relatively small sum of public money involved in the vigorous prosecution by the Government, with sympathetic endorsement from the public, of this systematic soil survey of the lands of this Dominion. In connection with entomological research, numerous consignments of parasites which prey upon such insect pests as the sheep blow-fly, the earwig, the pear slug, wood wasps, and wood lice have been shipped to New Zealand from the Parasite Laboratory at Farnham Royal, in Buckinghamshire, and many more of insect enemies of those noxious and all too prevalent weeds, ragwort, gorse, piri-piri, and blackberry; the results in the case of the first three of these are very promising. “ Another problem of vital importance to New Zealand, and still awaiting soluI tion, is the transport of chilled meat over

long distances in good condition,” his Excellency said. The deterioration resulting from a prolonged period of chilling is due to the growth of mould and bacteria. It is confidently expected that this problem will be solved in the notdistant future, in which case a valuable new industry in beef production would be established in this Dominion, and New Zealand would become a formidable competitor with the Argentine in supplying beef to British markets.