CORRESPONDENCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1925, Page 11

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE FERTILISER COMPANY. (To the Editor.) Sir, —In reply to Mr. Connett's letter on Tuesday last, I will endeavour to point out to him the situation as viewed from another angle—the view of the non-shareholder and the small late shareholder whose partly paid-up shares have been called in. I will here state that I have watched with the greatest of interest the progress of the New Zealand Farmers’ Fertiliser Company, Ltd,, right from its inception and admired it.s most laudable object, and I firmly believe it was started with the object of putting a steadier on the price of fertilisers, but, instead, we find it included in a triple alliance whose object is not to keep down prices but to sell for as high a price as possible, and I venture to say that if the price of butter-fat and basic .slag were to rise so would superphosphates in a corresponding degree, providing, of course, people had to buy it; in short, it would be sold for what it would bring, and not for what it could be manufactured for.

The object of the New Zealand Farmers’ Fertiliser Company was to sell direct to the farmers, and shares were sold on that understanding. With their method of trading I will admit that a farmer can bury direct from their factory, but he can’t save ony of the merchant’s commission. Oh! no; he is not in the ring, so the fertiliser company takes that, too, in addition to its very, very liberal manufacturing profits. In reference to the balance-sheet, I will ask Mr. Connett, as the chairman of a dairy factory, how his suppliers would like it if you put one before them without any mention of butter-fat in it, how many lb of cheese to the lb of butter-fat, etc. They would wonder what the game was, and there would be a riot. The New Zealand Farmers’ Fertiliser Company, instead of dealing with butter-fat, deal with phosphates, but on their balance-sheet we see no mention of phosphates at all. As tlie Nauru phosphate in its raw state contains 82 to 86 per cent, of tricolcic phosphate, and it costs the fertiliser company £2 4s 9d per ton, and they sell one ton of superphosphate containing 36 to 3'B per cent., or under half the phosphate content, for £6 Ifis per ton, there must be a very substantial overrun somewhere.

As the Nauru phosphate is a national asset, and is intended for the purpose of increasing the production of the soil, which directly or indirectly increases the prosperity of everyone in “God's own country,” I on this account feel justified in writing critically on this subject, especially as it appears to me, look at it how I will, that this most essential commodity is being exploited to such an extent that it is put out of the reach of those who need it most; that is to say, our returned soldiers and the innumerable other struggling farmers who are trying in vain to make a decent living on the land. Mr. Connett puts his shareholders’ claims before the claims of the thousands of families who are under-clothed and underfed, all for the want of a stimulant that the laud requires, but present of the manufacture of phoswhich is put out of their reach by the three firms who hold a monopoly at phate manures in New Zealand—l am, etc., —• J. FEAVER, Junr. Opunake, June 20.