PORK PRODUCTION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 73, Issue 6282, 16 September 1946, Page 5

PORK PRODUCTION

STEADY DECLINE IN PAST FOUR YEARS Slaughtering returns showed that the production of pig-meats had fallen considerably over the past four years, said the superintendent of the Pig Industry of the Department of Agriculture, Mr H. M. Peirson, last week. No effort had been spared to encourage production and prices were never better. Nevertheless, pig killings had fallen off each year since 1941 and were continuing to do so. Total killings in all export and rural slaughterhouses, abattoirs and on farms in 1945 showed a reduction of £418,000 compared with 1941 killings. “This reduction in numbers does not, of course, tell the whole story,” said Mr Peirson. “The increase in the number of heavyweight pigs for bacon helped to maintain pig-meats on a tonnage basis, so that while numbers decreased alarmingly the weight of pig-meats, which reached 52,000 tons in 1941, fell only to 42,000 tons in 1945.” There was little doubt, he said, that some of the falling off in production was because of the reduction in the number of cows milked, which was due mainly to a decrease in the labour available, and to lack of winter feed. To achieve the 1946-47 programme of increased production of pig-meat killings would have to increase by 200,000 pigs. The basis of increased pig production lay in the wintering of a greater number of pigs, and this involved the provision of a feed supply for the maintenance of pigs when supplies of dairy products were not available. The crop subsidy scheme was both a means of increasing the muchneeded home-grown supplies of feed and an indirect subsidy on production. The scheme was virtually a bonus of 10s a pig carried through, the winter. To assist in the drive for more pigmeats which were urgently needed, the Government had decided to continue the crop subsidy scheme, and to consider an increase in the price shedule for pigs.