The Kaipara & Waitemata ECHO WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED "THE KAIPARA ADVERTISER & WAITEMATA CHRONICLE" HELENSVILLE, THURSDAY, JUNE 2ND. CARELESS FARMERS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 2 June 1921, Page 2

The Kaipara & Waitemata ECHO WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED "THE KAIPARA ADVERTISER & WAITEMATA CHRONICLE" HELENSVILLE, THURSDAY, JUNE 2ND. CARELESS FARMERS.

EVERY successful farmer is of necessity a good business man,' but farmers as a class are curiously slow in adopting modern business methods. This was illustrated at recent local gatherings, when leaders (in speeches) had to " whip them up," so to speak. ""Costing and cost" is the pivot on which modern business revolves. Every manufacturer prides himself on knowing to three places in decimals ju«t how much the article he handles costs to produce, and he watches his costs as carefully as a ?ailor stuies the barometer. They are his barometer, for rising costs in a market where competition is keen and selling prices must be kept low, mark the approach of of stormy financial weather. What the merchant does carefully and methodically, the farmer does haphazardly, or not at all. Take the recent controversy as to the price of butter. One successful dairy farmer stoutly asserted that buUer costf 3s 6d a pound to produce under present conditions. Nobody believed him because he could produce no reliable figures to prove his assertion. Yet the manager of a factory would have produced in a few minutes from his records a detailed statement showing exactly what his manufacturing cost was. Every dairy factory manager does it, and is expected to do it by the very men who do not know just how much the cream they deliver to the factory costs them to produce. An even more striking instance took place a short time ago. The Agricultural Department collected from farmers the estimated yearly labour cost of milking a cow. The problem, one would have thought; was of the simplest, but the replies varied widely, being evidently not "estimates," but " guestimates." 'Yet the cost of a miking plant; the cost of running it, the sum to be charged yearly for depreciation and renewal, and the wages cost of attendance are known, and a little sum in simple division would give the yearly cost per cow. With hand-milking every hired man is expected to put through so many cows before his employer is satisfied that he earns his pay. With family milking many dairymen profess themselves unable to fix the value on the collective family labour, some seem to cherish the delusion that as no wages is actually paid the cost is nothing. This seems to explain the high prices—too high prices from the commercial point of view — often paid by practical men for land they intend to hold and work. They reckon they can make it pay at that price, and they do, or did,

generally make it pay, but only by capitalising their own labour and the labour of their families and presenting it to the seller of the land they purchase. And then they often complain bitterly —and justly —that compared with _the returns to city labour the farmers' returns compare badly. The remedy lies in every farmer keeping proper records and books as every other business man does. This does not mean the adoption of any elaborate system. For a few shillings the farmer can purchase books in which he can with very little trouble keep.a complete record of all his labours and transactions, and which will enable him to tell from week to week exactly how he stands.