New Zealand

Bananas For

Curious Angles of South

Pacific Trade

BECAUSE banana-hungry New Zealand cannot get enough bananas from Fiji (Fiji can low produce the fruit, but cannot jet enough cases to pack it in) NZ las been encouraging banana pre diction in Western Samoa.

Samoa is reaching out after this rade, and says it soon will be in a josition to ship between 20,000 and 15,000 cases per month—which will irovide the Fiji industry with seri als competition.

Bananas of very poor quality have een reaching NZ from Samoa, how ver, and there has been bitter riticism. The fault is in the pack ng. Samoan bananas appear to lave an excessive curve, causing raste of space in the cases, and the xporters have been packing little ananas into the curves, so as to ill the case and give the weight— ut with disastrous effect on aver ge quality.

A different kind of case is now i be tried by the Samoa banana iterests.

Hipping—And Some Politics

It is surprising that, in view of le difficulty and high cost of get ng suitable banana cases for Fiji nd Samoa, the people concerned o not again try to arrange ship ient in bunches. It is largely a latter of organisation and the pro- Ision of suitable ships. Large lipments from West Indies to nited States go in bunches, and le fruit arrives in far better con ition than when cut from the inches and packed closely in cases.

Bunch loading, of course, does itail a waste of space; and pro ibly the South Pacific-NZ banana affic is so small, comparatively, lat waste of space becomes a ajor factor.

Fiji and Samoa have only the one arket—NZ. Attempts have been ade, again and again, to market ie fine, well-flavoured Fiji banana l Australia—where it is eagerly cepted in place of the unattractive oduct of the Northern NSW •astal plantations: but the NSW mana-growers howl to their mem ;rs of Parliament, and the Fiji iportations always have been killed r political action.

Fiji imports a great deal of NSW >ur. If Fiji were to put a duty i Australian flour, to operate lenever Australia’s imports of Fiji nanas fell below a certain figure, ere might be interesting results, hich would have greater weight th Australian politicians—the tes of the banana-growers, or

those of the wheatgrowers and millers?

The Scramble for Cases

Suva, Feb. 24.

OUTCRY has been heard in Suva because Samoa Bulletin re ported that somebody in Fiji not long ago offered to sell low priced banana cases to Western Samoa.

When Apia made official inquiries in Suva, the Government of Fiji said the Colony is itself rather desperately short of cases for bananas, and that it would be several years before such exports would be permitted.

Large quantities of excellent bananas are now dumped on the local market, while New Zealand is crying out for them, simply because there are no cases in which to pack them.

New Zealand complaints about alleged poor quality of Fiji banana shipments have been handsomely withdrawn. It is the Samoan shippers who are on the Dominion’s mat.