LAND AT £60 PER ACRE.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 13 May 1920, Page 3

LAND AT £60 PER ACRE.

CAN WE MAKE IT PAY ?

A correspondent to the Te Aroha Now» ! writes as follows :— There seems to be a great difference of opinion a3 to whether a farmer can ! make interest on outlay and working expenses on land of the above value and I upwards ; but as some merely say in a general way it can be done, others say in an equally general way it cannot. As neither side gives any detail of accounts, their arguments are mere assertions and no proof. So with your permission I will try and supply details of outlay and income for a season. I will take a 100- j acre farm requiring two acres per cow. i 100 acres at £60 per acre—£6ooo at 6 per cent yearly, £360. 50 cows at, say, £23 per cow.—£llso at 6 per cent yearly, £9. ! Horses, machinery, implements.—£6oo | at 6 per cent, £36. Labour of owner or manager is £300, and one man at £2 and found, £155. Manure, benzine, repairs, £200. Yearly expenditure, £1121, Income of a 100-acre farm of 50 cows.— Take a herd which averages 201b of milk j per cow per day for a season of nine months and at a 4.0 test with butter-fat at 2s per lb, In a month of thirty days j each cow would give 6001b of milk or 241b of butter-fat, in nine months 2161b of butter-fat at 2s per lb, 432s or £21|125; 50 cows would thus return £1075. This estimate, I think, will be allowed to be j very moderate, and shows the milk i only—no crops, no calves, no pigs, and the expenses on rather a liberal basis' When you increase the daily average to I 231b of milk per cow, and for 50 cows £1365, instead of £1075. If anyone j wishes to find out how much a 100-acre ! farm would make that would run one cow to l^i acres of land (about 66 cows) he will only have the income from 16 j cows extra on'a return the same as I j adopted, or what he thinks his herd j would average per cow. As I am not a ; great head at figures, one only has to go \ over the"estimates to see where I may \ be wrong. This is, however, not an ex- j hibitiou oi: arithmetic, but a simple*) method of arriving at a means to find j out that given certain value of produce j you can got a, near idea what land i« worth.