Potato Prices

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19732, 10 September 1938, Page 20

Potato Prices

Six', —The information regarding the above, published in Thursday night’s paper, discloses a very sorry state of affairs and the very urgent necessity of a little more interference with private enterprise. According to the figures quoted in the article, potatoes cost £5 2s 6d per ton landed in Gisborne, yet we are charged 2s lid for 281 b., equalling £lO per ton, leaving a profit of £4 17s 6d on an article for which the producer receives £2 to grow. Southern potatoes are sold at 6s to 6s Od per cwt. in Auckland against 10s here. Why the difference?

Wheat comes from the same place, and I cannot understand why wheat is retailed to the consumer in Gisborne at an increase of approximately 60 per cent on the farmer’s price, yet potatoes require 500 per cent increase over the grower’s price, even though the latter are sold on trucks, whereas wheat is sold f.o.b.s.e.

Your informant put over a very thin smoke-screen in the past paragraph, deferring to the possibility of a rising market, following shipment overseas. This is a bit stale. Perhaps this firm does not know that over a month ago there was a surplus of 8000 tons, and the Government arranged the purchase of 2000 tons at £3 per ton for shipment on consignment to South America, and the market rose to £4 per ton but has since slipped to £2 and is to-day lifeless at £1 10s per ton. I would like to see some of these “rugged'" gentlemen growing spuds at £1 10s per ton In your leading article entitled.

"Lessons from Potatoes,” you seem to blame the Government because it could not find a market for the surplus. If people overseas will not take our potatoes, why blame the Government? The growers asked the Government to find markets for them, but what they should have done, if the slate of affairs in Gisborne is a fair guide, was to ask the Government to fix the prices as they do for wheat. That, I submit, is “The Lesson in Potatoes.” —Yours, etc., “FATHER OF NINE.”