The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, OCT. 15, 1941. BUTTER FROM THE PLAINS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 168, 15 October 1941, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, OCT. 15, 1941. BUTTER FROM THE PLAINS

INTERESTING facts and comparative figures regarding our own particular district are always welcome to readers. For this reason we have taken an analytical view of the 5000 tons of butter which were produced by the Rangitaiki Plains Dairy Company last year and decided to give, our subscribers something of a shock as to its bulk, capacity and extent. DicLyou know for instance that if the product for one years operations was placed in 6 inch pats end on end it would reach from the North Cape to the Bluff in a straight line (with an allowance made for Cook Strait) —a cable of butter 6x3 inches by 2 inches deep. Again if you were to give the 50,000 soldiers now overseas with the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force 2 cwt apiece to present to King Farouk of Egypt they would just about clean up the year's

supply. If you want to corrie nearer home, the Directors if they accepted Douglas Social Credit and decided to disburse their seasonal output over the whole population of New Zealand, they would be able to give every man, woman and child in the Dominion a present of over 4%lbs of butter. All this from the Rangitaiki Plains, think of it! But if they decided to be more economic and distribute it only to the average family of four persons they could keep 350,000 homes going at the rate of lib per day for a whole month. From the cubic aspect the total output would be. approximately the, size of Pohaturoa. Imagine the famous 'Rock' transformed into a glowling mass of butter and. you will have some idea of the immense amount of bulk taken up by the 5000 tons. Spread that amount over a single piece of bread at approximately one-eighth of an inch in depth and your gargantuan loaf surface would have to stretch from the coast to Onepu in a line up to Te Puke and then out to Mak.etu. Whakatane itself is rather more modest, but even with its consumption of 150 tons annually it is interesting to note that this figure would* represent a continuous line of pats from the wharf to the sawmill at Rotoehu, a distance of approximately 32 miles. Stretch the butter cable in another direction and you could run it six tjmes to Ohope and leave a little over for greasing the slide into the Learn-to-Swim Peol. No, the district doesn't fare so badly for every one of the 11,000 inhabitants consume a fraction over 301bs per nnum on. an average basis. We can safely say that we are nobly doing our duty on the home consumption front, and the bulk is close to the cubic capaqity of the Beacon Printery. It is somewhat staggering to reflect that all this vast quantity of butter is obtained from the natural milk given by old Daisy,'and that from the originally simple process of robbing Daisy's wailing off-spring mankind has built therefrom an. industry which practically dictates the prosperity of one million and a half people. Other figures as to the amount* of energy expended, manpower and electrical, are a little beyond us. We had a desire to get down to the pulsators gasps per pound, but this can await the Government efficiency programme which we understand will soon be extended from the maize industry in the near future to the Transport Alliance. However in passing it is worthy of note that the figures we have taken for our analysis represent only the output of the Rangitaiki Dairy Company's factory. It must not be thought that the Plains produce begins and ends there for the Opouriao and the Waimana factories are also drawing from the area known as Whakatane. The figures therefore, which we have propounded could be greatly extended if the products of the three factories were grouped together for comparative purposes.