ELECTRICITY FOR DAIRYING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2301, 12 July 1921, Page 2

ELECTRICITY FOR DAIRYING.

THE effect of a supply of electricity on the agricultural and dairying industries of N<-‘w Zealand is placed high in importance by Mr L. Birks, Chief Electrical Engineer. In his address to the Rotary Club in Wellington, Mr Birks said that the most urgent demand for electric poweif just at present comes from the Waikato and Hauraki Plains for operating milking machines. There aro 34,000 milk suppliers in New Zealand, and the number is increasing at the rate of 10 per cent, per year. Of these S.BOO used milking machinal 1019, practically all driven by 3 h.p. petrol or kerosene engines, and this number is increasing at the rate of 16 per cent, per year. The 2 h.p. electric motor, which is sufficient for dairy farm purposes, has about one half the first cost, anti less

than one-half the miming: cost of the corresponding: petrol or kerosene engine, and is safer, steadier, and more reliable. The cost of elec t tricity ranges from £2l to £3O per year, as compared with the cost of 30 to 50 cases of benzine —worth at the farm a great deal more than it costs to pay in Wellington. The advantage is so marked that several cases have occurred in which the electric motor was tlicv»deciding - factor in changing over the farm from agriculture to dairying. Southland for some time has been losing its rural population, who are migrating to the milder climate of the North Island, continued Mr Birks. Their ambitious electric power schema from Luke Monowai, with its 1,700 miles of distribution lines to every farm in the whole province, has been conceived with one main object—to hold the population and attract it back again by offering the economies, conveniences, and comforts of ■electric power on the farm. And although the present tinnncial depression has resulted in a check to them development in common with many other developments, Mr Birks said ho has-no doubt that Mr Rodgers’ idealism will be fully justified in the early future by the results.