Siberian Butter.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 272, 26 November 1901, Page 1

Siberian Butter.

A kew years ago the man who said said that Siberia would become one of the greatest agricultural countries in the world would have been laughed at. Still more ridicule would have been poured upon him if he had dared to predict that a country which, as everyone knew, was populated solely by convicts, exiles, warders, and wolves, and which consisted of snowfields and forests, would ever compete with Aew Zealand in the London market. Yet both these absurd things are coming to pass, and it is the Trans-Siberian railway that is making them possible. Butter from Siberia jostles the products of Taranaki or of 'Janterbury in London markets, and may in time swamp them by sheer three of quality. >ho trade is hardly yet in i;s infancy. It is onlv four

years ago, we are told, since a Danish merchant happened to see some 'Siberian butter in St. Petersburg, ami tv s astonished at its tine quality. Lite result of that accidental discover} is that to-day there are fourteen firm l in tlie city of Omsk alone, engaged ii the butter trade with England, and thirteen of them are Danish. “ Three years ago,” says a present traveller through ■•'ibevia, “4000 buckets, each c attaining about 361 b, were shipped by way of Riga and Revel to England ami sold in the English market, I’ve a suspicion, as the ‘best Danish ’ ” This year the summer export to England has amounted to 30,000 buckets say 4SO tons—per week. And this gr< a 1 trade, which has grown so rapidly, ideclared by those engaged in it. to ho “but a tiny scrap compared with wh. t will be dune iu the future.” The cows are miserable animals, but the pas turage is so good that their milk yields seveu per cent, of butter-fat. The main factor in preventing the trade growing even faster than it is doing is the stubborn ignorance of the people. The Russian farmer, take him all round, is probably the worst iu the world, and emigration to the fertile expanses of Siberia only seems to make him more happy-go-lucky in his motliods, and more determined to do nothing except in the way his father- and grandfather and all his ancestors back to his Tartar forbears

did. In all Siberia there are only two steam, dairies, and the treatment recently accorded to a big one built about 300 miles south of the railway by the Danish merchant to whom reference has been made was not calculated to load to the erection of others. “ The peasants,” he said, “ would not believe that a machine could separate the butter from the milk. They said the devil was iu'the machine. There’s been a drought down there. Everybody believed it was because the Almighty was angry that they should allow these devil machines in the country. So they wrecked the place and smashed every separator we had.” The optimistic Dane believed that in a year or two, as soon as the peasants become more civilised, they will better understand the value of machinery. The period he mentioned seems, however, rather short to bring about such a radical change. At present, at any rate, nearly all the butter is made in primitive fashion by hand. In view of all that has been said about tho filthiness of the Russian peasants, this statement prepares one for the news that the butter is “ not so clean-flavoured as it should be,” though hardly for the assertion that “it is splendid butter all the same.” The two conditions seems incompatible. The tremendous increase iu the trade is, however, proof that some people appr vo of tho butter. Happy ignorance of the conditions under which it is made has, no doubt, something to do with it. The Russian Government is nothing if not paternal. It is rather a stern parent if it is annoyed, and it does not take much to provoke it to wrath and chastisement. But its attitude towards Siberian immigrants is less paternal than avuncular. It does everything to encourage them. They are not required to pay Jtaxes for three years ; they can buy land near the large towns at the rate of from iOs to I2s per square verst, a verst being about two-thirds of a mile, and in other places good land can be bought at 6s a verst. Only half the price has to be paid down at first, full ownership being obtained when the immigrant has spent on plant and working twice the amount he paid for the land. Grants of land on leasehold are made to every man, in Western Liberia, to the extent of thirty-two square miles, with, in some places, an additional tract of six miles of forest, while in Central Siberia the size of the area depends upon the quality of the land. The Government lets the settlers have seed at cost price. It also buys agricultural machinery and re-seils it to settlers on easy terms, and in this connection it is noteworthy that America has this trade all to itself. Eight American firms have representatives in Omsk, and one of them is credited with saying that whereas three years ago he sold only forty reaping machines, this year he sold 1500, and this year he intends to stock 4000. Evidently the moujick is beginning to understand the value of the reaper and binder, however sourly he may look upon cream separators. Enough has been said to show that in at all events one product New Zealand has a cornYiatitor in Liberia, It is impossible to believe that Siberian butter can ever beat the best this colony can produce, and it is evidently ail the more necessary that, if possible, the whole of "'/aaluud’s export should be of [ New , * 1 — -Press. “ gilt-edged” quality