MEAT PRICES AND CATTLE REDUCTION.
[To can EDITOR or TIM SPECTATOR:1 Fle,-1 have read with interest your article on Food Control and beg to say that farmers in Lincolnshire predict a great scarcity of beef in the New Year, and a long-continued scarcity if the full scheme outlined in Lord Rhondda's statement is carried out. That statement says "The first step towards a satisfactory eysteni of reduction [in beef prices] is a reduction in the price of rtores." Had Lord If hOndda secured this first step his plan Might have succeeded; but he has not taken this first step, and his plan is therefore condemned by his own statement. his argues in one place that milk has the first claim and that cake cannot be spared for beef, and in another place foreshadows a supply of cake for fattening purposes at 86 per ton reduction. With "every hope" of the latter, an argument based on the former looks insincere. Fe also does Ilia Lordship's reminder to farmers that oilseeds have been limier control fo• some months when you know the resift of that control. My contract for good cotton cake in 1914 was at 44. per ton ex mill. The price paid list week to same place was 816 per ton under control. This is a- very -different control from that exercised over beef, and it makes one wonder
where the sixty per cent. theory comes in. The present cost of feeding-stuffs seems to um to settle the question for next January. An average bullock for stall feeding would easily eat 20s. worth of cake, swedes, and hay at present prices. The average gain of such a bullock is shown by results which have been published to be fourteen pounds per week in live weight. To sell this gain at 60s. per cwt. means a direct loss of 12s. 6d. per stone, or 810 on sixteen weeks' feeding. Food is plentiful in the fields, and it is really a larger supply of store cattle that is needed whether cake is available or not. The price of these would then right itself, and Lord Rhondda'. iatisfactory system of reduction in beef prices
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