Butter and Quotas.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20285, 20 April 1934, Page 6

Butter and Quotas.

Dear Sir, —I was extremely interested to read your leader on margarine versus butter in England, and had only to-day written to Wellington on the same subject, and pointed out that it was not New Zealand butter that was ousting English, but Danish. In England the quality of New Zealand butter is considered inferior and is usually referred to “as a good substitute for margarine,” and at its present price is very much so. This is a very good point to use in argument against the present suggested quota, which, if our dairy farmer succeeds in restricting output to raise prices, will not exist. Raise the quality by all means if it is not going to cost very much money, but from impressions gathered in England my advice is to keep the price down. And the margarine advertisements, which you quoted, make it more essential than ever. During my recent visit I entered into a discussion on the question with the National Farmers’ Union, and pointed out to them that in conjunction with our Dairy Board they should run advertisements on exactly the same lines as you have discovered the margarine people are wise enough to sponsor; that these advertisements should be distributed through the Lyons organisations, and their many thousands of eating houses, and that at the same time some influence should be used to persuade this wonderful organisation—which feeds many millions of people a day—to sell their butter at two pats a penny instead of one. If they achieved this, and I am confident it could be done w’ith the right approach, there would not be any need for restriction on imports. The reply to all this from the N.F.U. was that they really were not so concerned with butter as cheese. Listening to the hue and cry that has been going on regarding butter since my return, this statement of the N.F.U. keeps occurring to me, and I wonder if somebody has blundered, or is it that butter is just being used as a bogey to shake this island and Australia’s appalling self-confidence, and make them really think.—l am, etc., G. VALENTINE HOWEY.