FRUIT AND VEGETABLE MARKETING DISCUSSED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19154, 21 August 1930, Page 9

FRUIT AND VEGETABLE MARKETING DISCUSSED.

EVIDENCE IS GIVEN BEFORE COMMITTEE. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, August 21. Further evidence on the marketing of fruit and vegetables was heard today by the Industries and Commerce Committee of the House.

Kinnaird, representing the Central Otago Fruit-growers* Association, ■was of the opinion that the basis of standardisation and the ultimate stabilisation of the industry lay in the elimination of small fruit. and he gave the sizes that had proved in Otago to be economic from the point or view of the grower, the retailer and the consumer. He emphasised the success of co-operation in Otago, and it was a recommendation from the growers there that every assistance should be given by the Government towards the establishment of co-opera-tive concerns owned entirely by growers elsewhere.

Evidence was given by Mr Thomas Eldridge on behalf of the Christchurch Retailers’ Association. He asked that the Government should regulate the export of fruit and so ensure that sufficient fruit of all grades should be retained for local consumption. They claimed that too much first grade fruit was going out of the Dominion. Reform in the selection and marketing both of fruit and vegetables was advocated, and also re-packing of all Island oranges showing more than 10 per cent waste. An inquiry should be held by the Government into the banana trade as it was considered that the landed cost was too high. Dr Makgill, consulting medical officer of the Department of Health, who is also an orchardist, gave evidence that he thought that there was a small profit in the orchard, although his own did not show one. lie said that fruit could be bought in case lots at auction at fairly reasonable prices, but in small lots from shops it was another story. He condemned the present method of retailing in small lots in shops in the main streets.

where rentals were high and overhead expenses heavy. Neither the grower nor the wholesale merchant, nor the retailer benefited. It was possible to organise a system wherebv ten, twenty and forty pound lots of fruit could be delivered at consumers’ homes at a price in the vicinity of that now obtaining in the auction room*. lie did not favour compulsory grading. If a grading system were brought in he thought that the public would seek graded fruit, and ungraded fruit would bring a smaller price.