About Tomato

NZ Growers Howl About Tomato Imports From CI

From Our Special Correspondent NOEL HOLMES, in a lengthy article in the ’’Auckland Star" of August 17, stated the attitude of New Zealand growers of hot house tomatoes to the "threat” of increasing supplies of cheap, good quality winter tomatoes from the Cook Islands.

The article sets out the facts; The considerable amount of capital invested by the Auckland growers in glass-houses (about £1,000,000), and the generally high costs in volved in producing the fruit for a fickle market, as compared with costs in the Cook Islands, par ticularly in regard to labour.

As the New Zealand growers see it, the arrival of Cook Islands to matoes at the time when supplies are short has the effect of depress ing the market and robbing them of fair profits.

Whether the New Zealand con sumers, who have to pay about 6/per pound at that time of the year, see things in the same light is doubtful. Cook Islands fruit is bringing about 23/- per case in the Auckland market, with the growers well pleased.

The Auckland growers are "going

to complain,” but when they do, it is to be hoped that the import con trollers, who have already barred all but an air-freight fraction of the Norfolk Island tomato crop, will take full consideration of a point that was not raised in the Star article— that is, the fact that tomatoes are one of the very few crops that can be produced profitably in the Cook Islands.

The developing tomato-growing industry in the Cooks is of far greater economic importance to that Island Territory than is the Auck land tomato-growing industry to the New Zealand economy. The Cook Islands tomato industry is one of the Group’s three hopes—the others are citrus and pearlshell—by which the £150,000 subsidy paid by the New Zealand taxpayers might ever be reduced.

However, Auckland tomato grow ers have votes; Cook Islands grow ers have not.