Rotten Oranges!

Pacific Fruit Trade Is a Gamble.

(From a Special Correspondent.) ALL over the Central Pacific there is dissatisfaction with the fruit export business. There is dissatisfaction at the exporting end; dissatisfaction with shipping; dissatisfaction with market ing. A cry goes up against inspectors; against shipping concerns; against what is termed the fruit “rings” and fruit “sharks.” The best has not yet been done to stop the huge losses which, from year to year, go on repeating themselves.

Losses at times approach no less a figure than 50%. And upon whose shoulders are these losses heaped. Not upon the auctioneer; certainly, not upon the ship ping companies. They fall first upon the grower, then upon the exporter, but in the final analysis they slide on to the tax-burdened consumer in European countries.

Throughout the length and breadth of the fruit marketing countries, particu larly New Zealand, we find oranges be ing sold at a price ten times, indeed, many more times than this, the price at which they may be purchased at the Is lands. But the grower and the picker may well ask what advantage it will be to them to handle oranges with slow and deliberate care if the fruit is to become “cooked” in a ship’s hold or the market to be “rigged” by a fruit ring.

Criticism of the cold storage system of the marketing people is not against the use of cold storage, nor against the auctioneer’s right to purchase the fruit himself and stow it away to bridge the gap between the seasons. We see in it a part solution at least for the preserva tion of the fruit. But preliminary to the peak of the orange season the auctioneer, like a shrewd poker player, deals a run of flush hands of good prices to the ex porter. The day arrives when oranges are plentiful and, tempted by his good hand, the exporter, says; “Now is my chance.” He plunges, buys to the maxi mum for consignment and away goes his fruit. His expectations are high indeed.

He will win a pool.