Copra Output

Is It Possible To Reduce?

"One Product Which Can

Not Be Regulated”

Is if possible to regulate the

production of copra, so that a

world-glut of the product,

which has caused such serious depression in the industry, may be avoided? Is it possible to

arrange united action between

the copra-growers of Java,

Ceylon, Malaya and the South

Seas?

THESE questions were submitted by The Pacific Islands Monthly to Major Clive B. Joske, of Messrs. Brown and Joske Ltd.. Suva, who are the man aging agents of the Coconut Planters’

Union of Fiji. Major Joske, who is a keen student of the conditions sur rounding the copra industry, courte ously replied as follows: I do not agree with the idea of res tricted output, because, in the first place, I believe it to be economically unsound to attempt restriction of any primary product, and, secondly, because I think that if there was ever a primary product in which restriction of output was absolutely impossible, it is copra.

As far as my first reason is con cerned. I have merely stated this as a proposition. The arguments in its fav our would involve such a long disserta tion on the theory of economics that, even if I were capable of setting them out, I refrain from doing so. This is really rather like the question of re ligious faith either you believe or you don’t believe in it, so why waste time arguing about it.

As regards my second reason, I refer you first of all to that classic failure of restriction, i.e., the Stevenson scheme for rubber. There you had an article produced practically only in two or three countries, and whose cultivation was therefore limited to a small area.

You had, further, an article for which it was impossible to find a substitute.

You have a parallel to that product to-day in tin. (Where there is also over-production and depressed prices.) Now compare those products with copra, which is made along a broad band of varying countries, practically right round the world. It is not pro duced by the art of man to anything like the extent of rubber or tin. Prob ably 60 per cent, or even higher, of the world production of copra comes from small native holdings. If the Stevenson scheme was wrecked by native-produced rubber, how much more so would any scheme for the res triction of copra be wrecked? I should say that to devise any effective scheme for the control of the output of copra would be as effective as a snowball in Hades.

Copra has by no means got any shadow of a monopoly of any section of the fats and oils business. Its pres ent price position is not due so much to over-production in copra itself, as to over-production in almost every other oil seed, coupled wdth the energetic re entry into the oil markets of whale oil.

This has coincided with an era of phenomenal trade depression. So all we can do is to set to work to reduce the cost of our production of copra, so that we may compete adequately upon a lower price level with the other fats and oils. This and patience —is a far better reed upon which to lean than restriction of output.

At the annual meeting of the Oriomo Oil Co. Ltd., a company registered in Papua for oil prospecting, Mr. J. M.

Maughan, who presided, said it was hoped that as a result of the company’s interest in Oil Search Ltd., Oriomo Oil would soon be financially strong enough to undertake the required ex tension of its work in parts of Papua, already indicated by Dr. Woolnough, Federal Geological Adviser, as potential oil areas.

A seven-ton cutter, The Teddy, has reached Tahiti on her voyage round the world. She is owned by Captain Thams, who is accompanied by only his wife and one young child, born on the trip. The vessel sailed from Nor way two years ago and has called at the Canaries, Azores, Curacoa and the Marquesas. From Tahiti, the Teddy will go to New Zealand.

The soya bean—the cultivation of which in recent years has profoundly affected the present price of copra—is being grown in Fiji. Mr. R. V. Howard, writing in The Fiji Times, states that Mr. H. Howard has a small plantation of soya beans on his holding at Vaka viwai, Sigatoka River. The varieties growing are from seeds imported from Virginia and Georgia, U.S.A. The plants are flourishing, suggesting that this is a crop that might be profitably cultivated in Fiji.

New Guinea Development Co. N.L., has reported that Mr. P. R. Short, one of the technical directors of Placer De yelopment Ltd., who is now on the Morobe goldfields, is making an imme diate inspection of the company’s pro perty on behalf of the New York option holders.