THE BUTTER TRADE.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 177, 26 January 1895, Page 2

THE BUTTER TRADE.

In view of the knowledge we possess that there may be a further depression in the Home prices for butter before very long, there is oue point we would like to draw attention to and that is the enormous cost of placing the article on the market. It will surprise many of our readers to know that by the time the butter is sold to the wholesale dealers the costs for freight and charges reach very nearly tweuty per ceut for choicest factory makes at 108s. We had an inkling some time ago that such a tax existed, and when it was proposed to establish, with the help and under the auspices of the Agent-General in London, a distributing agency for the whole of the colonial dairy produce, we were pleased with the idea, as our readers may remember, because thereby a vastsaviug to the dairy farmers would have been effected, but, as the projector, Mr Valentine, was unable to float the company, the thing is yet in abeyance. Tbe unpleasant fact is this, " Too many pigs have their feet in the trough" after the butter leaves the factory, and that is proved by the fact that it takes twenty tons of butter to pay for one hundred tons to carry it to market. And it must be considered that our conclusions are drawn from top prices and that with a fall thero would be no diminution in the charges, except iv the commission which is the least of any. It is not easy to suggest a remedy, but still the cutting down of the expenses of transit from the factories to the port of shipment, the preservation of a high standard of quality ; and more economy in placing the article on the Home market would go far in the required direction.