ONION FAMINE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 287, 5 December 1939, Page 3

ONION FAMINE

RETAILING AT 9d. lb. WHO IS TO BLAME ? GOVERNMENT C HARGED WELLINGTON, Dec. 3. | Whv is Wellington short of onions? I There is nardly an onion to be’bought in the city, and the few that are availlable are being retailed at 8d and 9d a [lb. is not confined to Wellington; it is Dominion-wide, and the principal reason is delay in the arrival of shipments from Canada and California, which are New Zealand's chief suppliers at this lime of the year. The shortage of sterling funds is also a factor. ! Retail fruiterers in Wellington declare there is no legitimate reason for the acute shortage, nor for the famine prices that are now being charged; they claim that the New Zealand Government has had the opportunity for ;he past month to secure onions from Melbourne at £7 10s a ton f.o.b. Melbourne, a figure which would allow Jh- ni to be landed nere at about £ll a lon and sold by retailors over the I counter a! 2d to 3d a lb. [ Onions from Canada usually cost [about £l5 a ton, which allows a retail • price of about 4d a lb. here. To-day in i Wellington a few bags of onions—bought, it is understood, recently at 22s a bag—were sold at £2 5s a bag, and the purchasers apparently considered themselves fortunate to gefr them at all. One nwrehant blamed the Government k>i the present situa’/on. “After tiie Government had its lingers burnt over its deal in Japanese onions .some lime he said, “it. went Io the | other extreme and did not order ;eiiouy.ii onions from our regular supplier.-, in Canada. That delay and the time-lag caused by the war have resulted in one lot of Canadian onions being due in New Zealand some time next month instead of about November 5. They will reach here after two and a half months on the water, so we can imagine the condition in which lhej will arrive.” Merchants explain that the acute .shortage is not a sudden development, but has been pending for some time. “We have been short of onions ail along,” one man said. “Last year the merchants lost hundreds of pounds in onions alone by selling them at prices far below cost. Now the Government has taken over the lot and has caused an extreme shortage by under-buying and the public is made to shoulder the burden of famine prices. The merchants, of course, have now no opportunity of recovering tneir losses from last year.