BIG ADVANCE IN DAIRYING

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4558, 2 May 1923, Page 2

BIG ADVANCE IN DAIRYING

SOUTH AUCKLAND ACHIEVEMENT AUCKLAND. The manner in which the dairy industry lias contributed to the recovery of sound trading conditions in the South Auckland province is shown by some very interesting figures which were quot,ed yesterday by Mr W. Goodfellow, managing director of the N.Z. Co-operative Dairy Co., Ltd. The extraordinary production of butter-fat in the past season and the satisfactory advance payments made compared with the preceding season, declared Mr Goodfellow, have had the satisfactory result of putting into circulation for the past 10 months compared with the same period of the preceding year an extra amount of £1,238,516. The actual advance payments made this season totalled £2,884,921, compared with £1,646,415 to this date last year. It is very gratifying indeed, added Mr Goodfellow, to see such expansion, particularly as it is contributing very definitely and decidedly to the rapid recovery of normal trading conditions after the past disastrous slump. Farmers now are rapidly winning free of the incubus of debt that necessarily accumulated in some cases when butter-fat prices dropped sc suddenly, and on the ot,her hand are beginning to come slightly upon the market for luxury articles, such as motor cars. In one week recently the agent of one American make of car made 25 sales. This recovery in the purchasing power of the farming community is a good thing all round, particularly as the danger of speculation has been very thoroughly learned and the tendency is to put money into definite productive improvements and so increase the carrying capacity of farm lands. The extra production forced by the slump is likely to be continued to maintain the standard of prosperity, and in that fashion h will be found to have contributed a very great deal to the development and progress of the South Auckland province. In this way some measure of good may be said to have come out of what was at the time a very hard thing.