Chilled Beef and Deteriorated Land

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 220, 13 April 1933, Page 2

Chilled Beef and Deteriorated Land

Since the opinion of the experts that the time factor is now comparatively unimportant in shipping chilled beef to London is being confirmed by experience, the way is opening for the development of the trade in what is a new commodity. Perhaps it would be fairer to describe it as an old commodity delivered to Smithfiold in a more acceptable form. If New Zealand successfully develops the chilled beef trade, important effects will follow in farming economy, especially in the more economic utilisation of hilly forest country too steep for ploughing. This was the class of country into whose deterioration a special committee inquired some eight years ago. country comprising large areas of what may be broadly described as the King Country. The committee found that one of the most potent agents in the judicious management of these areas, especially in dealing with second growth of fern, was cattle. Unfortunately frozen beef was at a discount against its chilled rival, and so part of the remedy for deterioration could not be applied economically. New, as reported from London to-day, experience is confirming the experts in their opinion that the time factor (usually called “the handicap of distance” in New Zealand) is comparatively unimportant with chilled beef. Hence it may pay to run cattle on these hilly interior lands. The committee found that in the control of weeds, particularly fern, cattle were the settler’s strongest auxiliaries. On the ability or otherwise of the settler to stock his new burn with cattle depended, in nine cases out of ten, success or failure. The committee gave good reasons for its inclusion, but so long as there was no payable export market for beef, its advice was ruled out on the score of farm economy. The advent of chilled beef should change that aspect and help the settlers in these farming outposts in their struggle against resurgent Nature.