NEW ZEALAND SHEEP

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1780, 8 July 1926, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND SHEEP

FLOCKS RETURNING TO NORMAL.

REVIEW OF PAST TEN YEARS

The Government Statistician furnishes an illuminating review of the sheep figures for the Dominion in the Monthly Abstract of Statistics for June. These show that the mutton export in 1926 was less than fourfifths of what it was in 1916.

The slump did not make itself felt in the mutton and lamb export figures till 1922. The year ending April 30, 1921, was the mutton peak. The carcases of mutton exported totalled 5,659,292, lamb carcases 4,327.397, a total of 9,JD86,689 mutton and lamb carcases. Compare this with 2.008,481 carcases of mutton and 4.795,070 of lamb in 1926, a total of 6,803,551 calrcases. And in 1921 the number of sheep in the Dominion was 23,285,031, whereas in 1926 it has risen l to 24,747.848 (interim return). The number of sheep in New Zealand reached the peak in 1919, with a total of 25.828,554. Mutton export reached its top point in' the figures given above in 1921; but lamb went higher in 1922 (5,192,392 carcases), and reached peak inv 1923 (5,417,016 carcases). . The 25 million position, which wasattained by the flocks of. New Zealand at the beginning of the decade, is again in sight. But the war boom and post war inflation that led to an annual export (for a brief time) of nearly ten million sheep and lamb carcases is not in sight. If these exports are to rise,, they must be produced on a cost basis in tune with the price basis in London. Anglo-American finance is straining every nerve to substitute stability in prices for the pftst war fluctuation in prices. Fluctuation demoralises trade. The stability movement, aided by the 'gold basis, tends to reduce prices all round, but produce prices are still profitable for the producer whose costs are right—and reduced costs partly' depend on applied science.