Peanuts—New Enemy

Of Dairy Farmers

AUSTRALIAN dairy farmers are apparently determined to go to any lengths to protect butter agamst competition from that de testable stuff, margarine. Some of them are now asking for pro hibition on imports of peanuts.

They have declared that the nuts are used in margarine, and that if importation cannot be prevented it should at least be limited in the interests of butter. . Relatively few peanuts are being imported for margarine or anything else but the dairy farmers, quietened for a while by the Fed eral Government’s refusal last year to please them by placing an im port tax on New Guinea copra are looking for anything on which to place a ban. i S, u t ensland farmers sent up a , wlien the Government fnrfw t S + tat !- recen tly placed a fnvi her / estrictlon on the manufac ture of margarine, reducing the

that may’be made* from

tons to 4,236 tons a year. But S u lc ! - the , reduc tion was not half what it should have been iQ?i hey fought that double the 195! quota of 645 tons would be reasonable in the circumstances— the circumstance s being that Aus tralian dairy products were being

sold overseas at less than cost of production and that this situation had developed mainly since marg arine quotas were liberalised.

M i> d -. L - Br own, a former Director of Public Works in Fiji, was re cently transferred from a similar position in Cyprus to Kenya.

Local fishermen, using deep-li methods, were taking big hauls tuna and other fish in the Coc m May-June. In Mid-June th took 183 fish on one day, and Penrhyn, in two days inside t lagoon, some 5,400 Patuki we taken, most of them between 6 ai 12 lb.